7 nr-^ 



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X 



THE 




UTOCRAT 



OF THE 




REAKFAST-^t^ABLE, 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOS WELL. 




BOSTON: 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 

I 865. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of 
Massachusetts. 



48 6555 

JUL 1 8 1942 



University Press: 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge, 




THE AUTOCEAT'S ATJTOBIOGBAPHY. 




JHE interruption referred to in the first 
sentence of the first of these papers was 
just a quarter of a century in duration. 
Two articles entitled " The Autocrat 
of the Breakfast-Table " will be found in " The 
New England Magazine," formerly published in 
Boston by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date 
of the first of these articles is November, 1831, and 
that of the second, February, 1832. When " The 
Atlantic Monthly" was begun, twenty-five years 
afterwards, and the author was asked to write for 
it, the recollection of these crude products of his 
uncombed literary boyhood suggested the thought 
that it would be a curious experiment to shake the 
same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were 
better or worse than the early windfalls. 

So began this series of papers, which naturally 
brings those earlier attempts to my own notice 



iv THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

and that of some few friends who were idle enough 
to read them at the time of their publication. The 
man is father to the boy that was, and I am my 
own son, as it seems to me, in those papers of the 
New England Magazine. If I find it hard to par- 
don the boy's faults, others would find it harder. 
They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor, as 
I hope, anywhere. 

But a sentence or two from them will perhaps 
bear reproducing, and with these I trust the gen- 
tle reader, if that kind being still breathes, will be 
contented. 

— "It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with 
you, and, when you find yourself felicitous, take 
notes of your own conversation." 

— " When I feel inclined to read poetry I take 
down my Dictionary. The poetry of words is 
quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The au- 
thor may arrange the gems effectively, but their 
shape and lustre have been given by the attrition 
of ages. Bring me the finest simile from the whole 
range of imaginative writing, and I will show yon 
a single word which conveys a more profound, a 
more accurate, and a more eloquent analogy." — 

— " Once on a time, a notion was started, that 
if all the people in the world would shout at once, 
it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors 
agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some 
thousand shiploads of chronometers were distribut- 
ed to the selectmen and other great folks of all the 
different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing 



THE A UTOCRAT'S A UTOBIOGRAPHY, y 

else was talked about but the aAvful noise that was 
to be made on the great occasion. When the time 
came, everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear 
the universal ejaculation of Boo, — the word agreed 
upon, — that nobody spoke except a deaf man in 
one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in Pekin, 
so that the world was never so still since the crea- 
tion/' 



There w^as nothing better than these things, and 
there was not a little that was much worse. A 
young fellow of two or three and twenty has as 
good a right to spoil a magazine-full of essays in 
learning how to write, as an oculist like Wenzel 
had to spoil his hat-full of eyes in learning how to 
operate for cataract, or an elegant like Brummel to 
point to an armful of failures in the attempt to 
achieve a perfect tie. This son of mine, whom I 
have not seen for these twenty-five years, gener- 
ously counted, was a self-willed youth, always too 
ready to utter his unchastised fancies. He, like 
too many American young people, got the spur 
when he should have had the rein. He therefore 
helped to fill the market with that unripe fruit 
w^hich his father says in one of these papers abounds 
in the marts of his native country. All these by- 
gone shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, 
did he not feel sure that very few of his readers 
know anything about them. In taking the old 
name for the new papers, he felt bound to say that 



vi THE AVTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, 

he had uttered unwise things under that title, and 
if it shall appear that his unwisdom has not di- 
minished by at • least half while his years have 
doubled, he promises not to repeat the experiment 
if he should live to double them again and become 
his own grandfather. 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

Boston, November 1, 1858. 




S& to^^^^^^^^i''* 



THE AUTOCRAT 



OF 



THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 



THE AUTOCRAT 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 




I. 

WAS just going to say, when I was 
interrupted, that one of the many ways 
of classifying minds is under the heads 
of arithmetical and algebraical intel- 
lects. All economical and practical wisdom is an 
extension or variation of the following arithmet- 
ical formula : 2 + 2=4. Every philosophical 
proposition has the more general character of the 
expression a -f- 6 = c. We are mere operatives, 
empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in 
letters instead of figures. 

They all stared. There is a divinity student 
lately come among us to whom I commonly 
address remarks like the above, allowing him to 
take a certain share in the conversation, so far as 
assent or pertinent questions are involved. He 



2 THE AUTOCRAT 

abused his liberty on this occasion by presuming 
to say that Leibnitz had the same observation — 
No, sir, I replied, he has not. But he said a 
mighty good thing about mathematics, that sounds 
something like it, and you found it, not in the 
original, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. I will 
tell the company what he did say, one of these 
days. 

If I belong to a Society of Mutual Ad- 
miration ? — I blush to say that I do not at this 
present moment. I once did, however. It was 
the first association to which I ever heard the 
term applied ; a body of scientific young men in 
a great foreign city who admired their teacher, 
and to some extent each other. Many of them 
deserved it ; they have become famous since. It 
amuses me to hear the talk of one of those beings 
described by Thackeray — 

" Letters four do form his name " — 

about a social development which belongs to the 
very noblest stage of civilization. All generous 
companies of artists, authors, philanthropists, men 
of science, are, or ought to be, Societies of Mu- 
tual Admiration. A man of genius, or any kind 
of superiority, is not debarred from admiring the 
same quality in another, nor the other from re- 
turning his admiration. They may even associate 
together and continue to think highly of each 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3 

other. And so of a dozen such men, if any one 
place is fortunate enough to hold so many. The 
being referred to above assumes several false prem- 
ises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate 
each other. Secondly, that intimate knowledge 
or habitual association destroys our admiration 
of persons whom we esteemed highly at a dis- 
tance. Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, 
who meet together to dine and have a good time, 
have signed a constitutional compact to glorify 
themselves, and to put down him and the fraction 
of the human race not belonging to their number. 
Fourthly, that it is an outrage that he is not asked 
to join them. 

Here the company laughed a good deal, and the 
old gentleman who sits opposite said, " That 's it ! 
that 's it ! " 

I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As 
to clever people's hating each other, I think a little 
extra talent does sometimes make people jealous. 
They become irritated by perpetual attempts and 
failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispo- 
sitions. Unpretending mediocrity is good, and 
genius is glorious ; but a weak flavor of genius 
in an essentially common person is detestable. 
It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace 
character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine- 
glass spoil a draught of fair water. No wonder 
the poor fellow we spoke of, who always belongs 



4 - THE AUTOCRAT 

to this class of slightly flavored mediocrities, is 
puzzled and vexed by the strange sight of a dozen 
men of capacity working and playing together in 
harmony. He and his fellows are always fighting. 
With them familiarity naturally breeds contempt. 
If they ever praise each other's bad drawings, or 
broken-winded novels, or spavined verses, nobody 
ever supposed it was from admiration; it was 
simply a contract between themselves and a pub- 
lisher or dealer. 

If the Mutuals have really nothing among them 
worth admiring, that alters the question. But if 
they are men with noble powers and qualities, let 
me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family 
affections, there is no human sentiment better than 
that which unites the Societies of Mutual Admi- 
ration. And what would literature or art be 
without such associations ? Who can tell what 
we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of 
which Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beau- 
mont and Fletcher were members ? Or to that 
of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, 
and which gave us the Spectator? Or to that 
where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and 
Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most ad- 
miring among all admirers, met together ? Was 
there any great harm in the fact that the Irvings 
and Paulding wrote in company ? or any unpar- 
donable cabal in the literary union of Verplanck 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 5 

and Bryant and Sands, and as many more as 
they chose to associate with them? 

The poor creature does not know what he is 
talking about, when he abuses this noblest of in- 
stitutions. Let him inspect its mysteries through 
the knot-hole he has secured, but not use that 
orifice as a medium for his popgun. Such a soci- 
ety is the crown of a literary metropolis ; if a town 
has not material for it, and spirit and good feeling 
enough to organize it, it is a mere caravansary, fit 
for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in. 
Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an 
association of men of varied powers and influence, 
because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by 
the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones 
are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all 
their other honors put together. 

All generous minds have a horror of what 

are commonly called ^' facts." They are the 
brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who 
does not know fellows that always have an ill- 
conditioned fact or two which they lead after them / 
into decent company like so many bull-dogs, \ 
ready to let them slip at every ingenious sugges- 
tion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant 
fancy ? I allow no '' facts " at this table. What ! 
Because bread is good and wholesome and neces- 
sary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb 
into my windpipe while I am talking ? Do not 



6 THE AUTOCRAT 

these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves 
of bread ? and is not my thought the abstract of 
ten thousand of these crumbs of truth with which 
you would choke off my speech '^ 

[The above remark must be conditioned and 
qualified for the vulgar mind. The reader will 
of course understand the precise amount of season- 
ing which must be added to it before he adopts it 
as one of the axioms of his life. The speaker dis- 
claims all responsibility for its abuse in incompe- 
tent hands.] 

This business of conversation is a very serious 
matter. There are men that it weakens one to 
talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would 
do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as 
good as a working professional man's advice, and 
costs you nothing : It is better to lose a pint of 
blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. 
Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs 
away, nor bandages your brain and marrow after 
the operation. 

There are men of esprit who are excessively ex- 
hausting to some people. They are the talkers 
who have what may be cdll^di jerky minds. Their 
thoughts do not run in the natural order of se- 
quence. They say bright things on all possible 
. subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. 
/ After a jolting half-hour with one .of these jerky 
companions, talking with a dull friend affords 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 7 

great relief. It is like taking the cat in jour lap 
after holding a squirrel. 

Wliat a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to 
be sure, at times ! A ground-glass shade over a 
gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled 
eyes than such a one to our minds. 

" Do not dull people bore you *? " said one of 
the lady-boarders, — the same that sent me her 
autograph-book last week with a request for a few 
original stanzas, not remembering that " The Pac- 
tolian " pays me five dollars a line for everything 
I write in its columns. 

" Madam," said I, (she and the century were in 
their teens together,) "all men are bores, except 
when we want them. There never was but one 
man whom I would trust with my latch-key." 

" Who might that favored person be 1 " 

" Zimmermann." 

The men of genius that I fancy most have 

erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You re- 
member what they tell of William Pinkney, the 
great pleader ; how in his eloquent paroxysms the 
veins of his neck would swell and his face flush 
and his eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge 
of apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for sup- 
plying the brain with blood are only second in 
importance to its own organization. The bulbous- 
headed fellows that steam well when they are at 
work are the men that draw big audiences and 



8 THE AUTOCRAT 

give us marrowy books and pictures. It is a good 
sign to have one^s feet grow cold when he is writ- 
ing. A great writer and speaker once told me 
that he often wrote with his feet in hot water ; 
but for this, all his blood would have run into his 
head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws into 
the ball of a thermometer. 

You don't suppose that my remarks made 

at this table are like so many postage-stamps, do 
you, — each to be only once uttered ? If you do, 
you are mistaken. He must be a poor creature 
that does not often repeat himself. Imagine the 
author of the excellent piece of advice, " Know 
thyself," never alluding to that sentiment again 
during the course of a protracted existence 1 Why, 
the truths a man carries about with him are his 
tools ; and do you think a carpenter is bound to 
use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty 
board with, or to hang up his hammer after it 
has driven its first nail 1 I shall never repeat a 
conversation, but an idea often. I shall use the 
same types when I like, but not commonly the 
same stereotypes. A thought is often original, 
though you have uttered it a hundred times. It 
has come to you over a new route, by a new and 
express train of associations. 

Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught 
making the same speech twice over, and yet be held 
blameless. Thus, a certain lecturer, after per- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 9 

forming in an inland city, where dwells a LMra- 
trice of note, was invited to meet her and others 
over the social teacup. She pleasantly referred to 
his many wanderings in his new occupation. 
" Yes,^^ he repUed, " I am like the Huma, the 
bird that never lights, being always in the cars, as 
he is always on the wing." — Years elapsed. The 
lecturer ^-isited the same place once more for the 
same purpose. Another social cup after the lec- 
ture, and a second meeting with the distinguished 
lady. " You are constantly going from place to 
place,'' she said. — " Yes,'' he answered, " I am 
like the Huma," — and finished the sentence as 
before. 

WTiat horrors, when it flashed over him that he 
had made this fine speech, word for word, twice 
over ! Yet it was not true, as the lady might per- 
haps have fairly inferred, that he had embellished 
his conversation with the Huma daily during that 
whole interval of years. On the contrary, he had 
never once thought of the odious fowl until the 
recuiTcnce of precisely the same circumstances 
brought up precisely the same idea. He ought 
to have been proud of the accuracy of his mental 
adjustments. Given certain factors, and a sound 
brain should always evolve the same fixed product 
with the certainty of Babbage's calculating ma- 
chine. 

TYhat a satire, by the way, is that machine 



lo THE AUTOCRAT 

on the mere mathematician ! A Erankenstein- 
monster, a thing without brains and without heart, 
too stupid to make a blunder ; that turns out re- 
sults like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser 
or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of 
them! 

I have an immense respect for a man of talents 
plus " the mathematics." But the calculating 
power alone should seem to be the least human 
of qualities, and to have the smallest amount of 
reason in it ; since a machine can be made to do 
the work of three or four calculators, and better 
than any one of them. Sometimes I have been 
troubled that I had not a deeper intuitive appre- 
hension of the relations of numbers. But the 
triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has consoled 
me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels click- 
ing in a calculator's brain. The power of dealing 
with numbers is a kind of " detached lever " ar- 
rangement, which may be put into a mighty poor 
watch. I suppose it is about as common as the 
power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a 
moderately rare endowment. 

Little localized powers, and little narrow 

streaks of specialized knowledge, are things men 
are very apt to be conceited about. Nature is very 
wise ; but for this encouraging principle how many 
small talents and little accomplishments would be 
neglected! Talk about conceit as much as you 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. n 

like, it is to human character what salt is to the 
ocean ; it keeps it sweet, and renders it endurable. 
Say rather it is like the natural unguent of the 
sea-fowl's plumage, which enables him to shed the 
rain that falls on him and the wave in which he 
dips. When one has had all his conceit taken out of 
him, when he iias lost mil his illusions, his feathers 
will soon soak through, and he will fly no more. 

" So you admire conceited people, do you ? " 
said the young lady who has come to the city to 
be finished off for — the duties of life. 

I am afraid you do not study logic at your 
school, my dear. It does not follow that I wish 
to be pickled in brine because I like a salt-water 
plunge at Nahant. I say that conceit is just as 
natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to 
a circle. But little-minded people's thoughts move 
in such small circles that five minutes' conversation 
gives you an arc long enough to determine their 
whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large 
intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight 
line. Even if it have the third vowel as its cen- 
tre, it does not soon betray it. The highest 
thought, that is, is the most seemingly imperson- 
al; it does not obviously imply any individual 
centre. 

Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, 
is always imposing. What resplendent beauty 
that must have been which could have authorized 



12 THE AUTOCRAT 

Phryne to " peel " in the way she did ! What fine 
speeches are those two : " Non omnis moriar/' and 
" I have taken all knowledge to be my province '' ! 
Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of 
making them cheerful; the man who thinks his 
wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and 
himself severally unequallec^ is almost sure to be a 
good-humored person, though liable to be tedious 
at times. 

What are the great faults of conversation ? 

Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, 
are. the principal ones, I suppose you think. I 
don^t doubt it, but I will tell you what I have 
found spoil more good talks than anything else ; 
— long arguments on special points between peo- 
ple who differ on the fundamental principles upon 
which these points depend. No men can have sat- 
isfactory relations with each other until they have 
agreed on certain ultimata of belief not to be dis- 
turbed in ordinary conversation, and unless they 
have sense enough to trace the secondary ques- 
tions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their 
source. In short, just as a written constitution is 
essential to the best social order, so a code of final- 
ities is a necessary condition of profitable talk be- 
tween two persons. Talking is like playing on 
the harp ; there is as much in laying the hand on 
the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging 
them to bring out their music. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 13 

Do you mean to say the pun-question is 

not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay 
down the law upon the subject. Life and lan- 
guage are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide — 
that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal re- 
sults to its legitimate meaning, which is its life — 
are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, wliich is the 
meaning of the one, is the same as man's laugh- 
ter, which is the end of the other. A pun is prima 
facie an insult to the person you are talking with. 
It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt 
for his remarks, no matter how serious. I speak 
of total depravity, and one says all that is written 
on the subject is deep raving. I have committed 
my self-respect by talking with such a person. I 
should like to commit him, but cannot, because he 
is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological convul- 
sions, and he asks me what w^as the cosine of 
Noah's ark ; also, whether .the Deluge was not a 
deal huger than any modern inundation. 

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in re- 
turn. But if a blow were given for such cause, 
and death ensued, the jury would be judges both 
of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the lat- 
ter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict 
of justifiable homicide. Thus, in a case lately de- 
cided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a sub- 
scription paper, and urged the claims of suffering 
humanity. Roe replied by asking, When charity 



14 THE AUTOCRAT 

was like a top ? It was in evidence that Doe pre- 
served a dignified silence. Roe then said, " When 
it begins to hum." Doe then — and not till then 
— struck Roe, and his head happening to hit a 
bound volume of the Monthly Rag-bag and Stolen 
Miscellany, intense mortification ensued, with a 
fatal result. The chief laid down his notions of 
the law to his brother justices, who unanimously 
replied <'Jest so." The chief rejoined, that no 
man should jest so without being punished for it, 
and charged for the prisoner, who was acquitted, 
and the pun ordered to be burned by the sheriff. 
The bound volume was forfeited as a deodand, but 
not claimed. 

People that make puns are like wanton boys 
that put coppers on the railroad* tracks. They 
amuse themselves and other children, but their lit- 
tle trick may upset a freight train of conversation 
for the sake of a battered witticism. 

I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two 
books, of which I will mark the places on this 
slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may say that 
this boy, our landlady's youngest, is called Benja- 
min Franklin, after the celebrated philosopher of 
that name. A highly merited compliment.) 

I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. 
Now be so good as to listen. The great moralist 
says : " To trifle with the vocabulary which is the 
vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15 

currency of human intelligence. He who would 
violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would 
invade the recesses of the paternal till without re- 
morse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn without 
an indigestion." 

And, once more, listen to the historian. " The 
Puritans hated puns. The Bishops were noto- 
riously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal 
carried them to the verge of license. Majesty it- 
self must have its Royal quibble. * Ye be burly, 
my Lord of Burleigh,' said Queen Elizabeth, ' but 
ye shall make less stir in our realm than my Lord 
of Leicester.' The gravest wisdom and the high- 
est breeding lent their sanction to the practice. 
Lord Bacon playfully declared himself a descend- 
ant of 'Og, the King of Bashan. Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, ynth. his last breath, reproached the soldier 
who brought him water, for wasting a casque full 
upon a dying man. A courtier, who saw Othello 
performed at the Globe Theatre, remarked, that the 
blackamoor was a brute, and not a man. ' Thou 
hast reason,' replied a great Lord, * according to 
Plato his saying ; for this be a two-legged animal 
with feathers.' The fatal habit became universal. 
The language was corrupted. The infection spread 
to the national conscience. Political double-deal- \ 
ings naturally grew out of verbal double mean- ' 
ings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by Nv 
the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equiv- / 



i6 THE AUTOCRAT 

ocation. "JVhat was levity in the time of the 
Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the 
age of the Stuarts." ^ 

Who was that boarder that just whispered some- 
thing about the Macaulay-flowers of literature *? — 
There was a dead silence. — I said calmly, I shall 
henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a 
hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead 
my example. If / have used any such, it has been 
only as a Spartan father would show up a drunk- 
en helot. We have done with them. 

If a logical mind ever found out anything 

with its logic ? — I should say that its most fre- 
quent work was to build a pons asinorum over 
chasms which shrewd people can bestride without 
such a structure. You can hire logic, in the shape 
of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to 
prove. You can buy treatises to show that Napo- 
leon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill 
was ever fought. The great minds are those with 
a wide span, which couple truths related to, but 
far removed from, each other. Logicians carry 
the surveyor's chain over the track of which these 
are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for 
his primary relations with truth, as I understand 
truth, — not for any secondary artifice in handling 
his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in argument 
are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should 
not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any more 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 17 

than that of a good chess-player. Either may of 
course advise wisely, but not necessarily because 
he wrangles or plays wtII. 

The old gentleman who sits opposite got his 
hand up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, at the ex- 
pression, " his relations with truth, as I understand 
truth,'' and when I had done, sniffed audibly, and 
said I talked like a transcendentalist. For his 
pai't, common sense was good enough for him. 

Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied ; common 
sense, as you understand it. "We all have to assume 
a standard of judgment in our own minds, either 
of things or persons. A man who is willing to 
take another's opinion has to exercise his judg- 
ment in the choice of whom to follow, which is 
often as nice a matter as to judge of things for 
one's self. On the whole, I had rather judge 
men's minds by comparing their thoughts with 
my own, than judge of thoughts by knowing who 
utter them. I must do one or the other. It does 
not follow, of course, that I may not recognize an- 
other man's thoughts as broader and deeper than 
my own ; but that does not necessarily change my 
opinion, otherwise this would be at the mercy of 
every superior mind that held a different one. 
How many of our most cherished beliefs are like 
those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, that 
serve us well so long as we keep them in our hand, 
but spill all if we attempt to set them down ! I 
2 



i8 THE AUTOCRAT 

have sometimes compared conversation to the Ital- 
ian game of mora, in which one player lifts his 
hand with so many fingers extended, and the other 
gives the number if he can. I show my thought, 
another his ; if they agree, well ; if they differ, we 
find the largest common factor, if we can, but at 
any rate avoid disputing about remainders and 
fractions, which is to real talk what tuning an in- 
strument is to playing on it. 

What if, instead of talking this morning, 

I should read you a copy of verses, with critical 
remarks by the author 1 Any of the company can 
retire that like. 

ALBUM VERSES. 

When Eve had led her lord away, 

And Cain had killed his brother, 
The stars and flowers, the poets say, 

Agreed with one another 

To cheat the cunning tempter's art, 

And teach the race its duty, 
By keeping on its wicked heart 

Their eyes of light and beauty. 

A million sleepless lids, they say, 

Will be at least a warning ; 
And so the flowers would watch by day, 

The stars from eve to morning. 

On hill and prairie, field and lawn, 

Their dewy eyes upturning, 
The flowers still watch from reddening dawn 

Till western skies are burning. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 19 

Alas ! each hour of daylight tells 

A tale of shame so crushing, 
That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, 

And some are always blushing. 

But when the patient stars look down 

On all their light discovers, 
The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown, 

The lips of lying lovers, 

They try to shut their saddening eyes. 

And in the vain endeavor 
We see them twinkling in the skies, 

And so they wink forever. 

What do you think of these verses my friends ? — 
Is that piece an impromptu ? said my landlady's 
daughter, (^t. 19+. Tender-eyed blonde. Long 
ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. 
Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. 
Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvan us 
Cobb, junior, while her mother makes the puddings. 
Says, "Yes?" when you tell her anything.) — 
Oai et non, ma petite, — ■ Yes and no, my child. Five 
of the seven verses were written off-hand ; the other 
two took a week, — that is, were hanging round 
the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition 
as long as that. All poets will tell you just such 
stories. C'est le dernier pas qui coute. Don't 
you know how hard it is for some people to get 
out of a room after their visit is really over ? They 
want to be off, and you want to have them oif, but 
they don't know how to manage it. One would 



20 THE AUTOCRAT 

think they had been built in your parlor or study, 
and were waiting to be launched. I have con- 
trived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such 
visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth 
phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speak- 
ing, stern-foremost, into their "native element," 
the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are 
poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. 
They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable 
rhymes, day, ray, beauty, duty, shies, eye^, other, brother, 
mountain, fountain, and the like ; and so they go on 
until you think it is time for the wind-up, and the 
wind-up won't come on any terms. So they lie 
about until you get sick of the sight of them, and 
end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet 
upon them, and turning them out of doors. I sus- 
pect a good many " impromptus " could tell just 
such a story as the above. — Here turning to our 
landlady, I used an illustration which pleased the 
company much at the time, and has since been 
highly commended. " Madam," I said, " you can 
pour three gills and three quarters of honey from 
that pint jug, if it is full, in less than one minute ; 
but. Madam, you could not empty that last quarter 
of a gill, though you were turned into a marble 
Hebe, and held the vessel upside down for a thou- 
sand years. 

One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, 
such as you see in that copy of verses, — which I 



OF THE BEEAKFAST^TABLE. 21 

don't mean to abuse, or to praise either. I always 
feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new top-leathers 
to an old pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am 
fitting sentiments to these venerable jingles. 

youth 
morning 

truth 
warning. 

Nine tenths of the " Juven 
spring out of the above musical and suggestive co- 
incidences. 

" Yes ? '^ said our landlady's daughter. 

I did not address the following remark to her, 
and I trust, from her limited range of reading, 
she will never see it ; I said it softly to my next 
neighbor. 

When a young female wears a flat circular side- 
curl, gummed on each temple, — when she walks 
with a male, not arm in arm, but his arm against 
the back of hers, — and when she says " Yes ? " 
with the note of interrogation, you are generally 
safe in asking her what wages she gets, and who 
the " feller " was you saw her with. 

" What were you whispering ? '' said the daugh- 
ter of the house, moistening her lips, as she spoke, 
in a very engaging manner. 

" I was only laying down a principle of social 
diagnosis." 

« Yes ? " 



22 



THE AUTOCRAT 



' It is curious to see how the same wants 

and tastes find the same implements and modes 
of expression in all times and places. The young 
ladies of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voy- 
ages, had a sort of crinoline arrangement fully 
equal in radius to the largest spread of our own 
lady-baskets. When I fling a Bay- State shawl 
over my shoulders, I am only taking a lesson 
from the climate that the Indian had learned be- 
fore me. A 6/a?^^e^shawl we call it, and not a 
plaid ; and we wear it like the aborigines, and not 
like the Highlanders. 

We are the Komans of the modern world, 

— the great assimilating people. Conflicts and 
conquests are of course necessary accidents with 
us, as with our prototypes. And so we come to 
their style of weapon. Our army sword is the 
short, stiffs, pointed gladius of the Romans ; and 
the American bowie-knife is the same tool, modi- 
fied to meet the daily wants of civil society. I 
announce at this table an axiom not to be found 
in Montesquieu or the journals of Congress : — 

The race that shortens its weapons lengthens 
its boundaries. 

Corollary. It was the Polish lance that left 
Poland at last with nothing of her own to bound. 

" Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear ! " 

What business had Sarmatia to be fighting for 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 23 

liberty with a fifteen-foot pole between her and the 
breasts of her enemies ? If she had but clutched 
the old Roman and young American weapon, and 
come to close quarters, there might have been a 
chance for her ; but it would have spoiled the best 
passage in the " Pleasures of Hope/' 

Self-made men ? — Well, yes. Of course 

everybody likes and respects self-made men. It 
is a great deal better to be made in that way than 
not to be made at all. Are any of you younger 
people old enough to remember that Irishman's 
house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, wliich 
house he built from drain to chimney-top with his 
own hands ? It took him a good many years to** 
build it, and one could see that it was a little out 
of plumb, and a little wa\'y in outline, and a little 
queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular 
hand could certainly have built a better house; 
but it was a very good house for a " self-made " 
carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said 
how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. 
They never thought of praising the fine blocks of 
houses a little farther on. 

Your self-made man, whittled into shape with 
his own jackknife, deserves more credit, if that is 
all, than the regular engine-turned article, shaped 
by the most approved pattern, and French-polished 
by society and travel. But as to saying that one 
is every way the equal of the other, that is another 



24 " THE AUTOCRAT 

matter. The right of strict social discrimination 
of all things and persons, according to their merits, 
native or acquired, is one of the most precious 
republican privileges. I take the liberty to ex- 
ercise it, when I say, that, other things being equals 
in most relations of life I prefer a man of family. 

What do I mean by a man of family ? — O, I '11 
give you a general idea of what I mean. Let us 
give him a first-rate fit out ; it costs us nothing. 

Four or five generations of gentlemen and 
gentlewomen ; among them a member of his Ma- 
jesty's Council for the Province, a Governor or so, 
one or two Doctors of Divinity, a member of 
Congress, not later than the time of top-boots with 
tassels. 

Family portraits. The member of the Council, 
by Smibert. The great merchant-uncle, by Cop- 
ley, full length, sitting in his arm-chair, in a vel- 
vet cap and flowered robe, with a globe by him, 
to show the range of his commercial transactions, 
and letters with large red seals lying round, one 
directed conspicuously to The Honorable, etc., etc. 
Great-grandmother, by the same artist; brown 
satin, lace very fine, hands superlative ; grand old 
lady, stifiish, but imposing. Her mother, artist 
unknown ; flat, angular, hanging sleeves ; parrot 
on fist. A pair of Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb full- 
blown, mediaeval gentleman, with a fiery dash of 
Tory blood in his veins, tempered down with that 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 25 

of a fine old rebel grandmother, and warmed up 
with the best of old India Madeira; his face is 
one flame of ruddy sunshine; his ruffled shirt 
rushes out of his bosom with an impetuous gener- 
osity, as if it would drag his heart after it ; and 
his smile is good for twenty thousand dollars to 
the Hospital, besides ample bequests to all rela- 
tives and dependants. 2. Lady of the same ; re- 
markable cap ; high waist, as in time of Empire ; 
bust a la Josephine ; wisps of curls, like celery-tips, 
at sides of forehead ; complexion clear and warm, 
like rose-cordial. As for the miniatures by Mal- 
bone, we don't count them in the gallery. 

Books, too, with the names of old college-stu- 
dents in them, — family names ; — you will find 
them at the head of their respective classes in the 
days when students took rank on the catalogue 
from their parents' condition. Elzevirs, with the 
Latinized appellations of youthful progenitors, and 
Hie liber est mens on the title-page. A set of 
Hogarth's original plates. Pope, original edition, 
15 volumes, London, 1717. Barrow on the lower 
shelves, in folio. Tillotson on the upper, in a 
little dark platoon of octo-decimos. 

Some family silver ; a string of wedding and 
funeral rings ; the arms of the family curiously 
blazoned; the same in worsted, by a maiden 
aunt. 

If the man of family has an old place to keep 



l6 THE AUTOCRAT 

these things in, furnished with claw-footed chairs 
and black mahogany tables, and tall bevel-edged 
mirrors, and stately upright cabinets, his outfit is 
complete. 

No, my friends, I go (always, other things being 
equal) for the man who inherits family traditions 
and the cumulative humanities of at least four or 
five generations. Above all things, as a child, he 
should have tumbled about in a library. All men 
are afraid of books, who have not handled them 
from infancy. Do you suppose our dear didascalos 
over there ever read PoU Synopsis, or consulted 
CastelU Lexicon, while he was growing up to their 
stature ? Not he ; but virtue passed through the 
hem of their parchment and leather garments 
whenever he touched them, as the precious drugs 
sweated through the bat's handle in the Arabian 
story. I tell you he is at home wherever he smells 
the invigorating fragrance of Russia leather. No 
self-made man feels so. One may, it is true, have 
all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be 
a boor or a shabby fellow. One may have none 
of them, and yet be fit for councils and courts. 
Then let them change places. Our social arrange- 
ment has this great beauty, that its strata shift up 
and down as they change specific gravity, without 
being clogged by layers of prescription. But I 
still insist on my democratic liberty of choice, and 
I go for the man with the gallery of family por- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 27 

traits against the one with the twenty-five-cent 
daguerrotype, unless I find out that the last is 
the better of the two. 

1 should have felt more nervous about the 

late comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. 
But it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken ; 
and besides, there is a great deal of coal to use up, 
Avhich I cannot bring myself to think was made 
for nothing. If certain things, which seem to me 
essential to a millennium, had come to pass, I 
should have been frightened ; but they have n't. 
Perhaps you would like to hear my 

LATTER-DAY WARNINGS. 

When legislators keep the law, 
When banks dispense with bolts and locks, 

When berries, whortle-, rasp-, and straw-, 
Grow bigger downwards through the box, — 

When he that selleth house or land 
Shows leak in roof or flaw in right, — 

When haberdashers choose the stand 
■^hose window hath the broadest light, — 

When preachers tell us all they think. 

And party leaders all they mean, — 
When what we pay for, that we drink. 

From real grape and coffee-bean. — 

When lawyers take what they would give, 
And doctors give what they would take, — 

When city fathers eat to live, 
Save when they fast for conscience' sake, — 



28 THE AUTOCRAT 

When one that hath a horse on sale 

Shall bring his merit to the proof, 
Without a lie for every nail 

That holds the iron on the hoof, — 

When in the usual place for rips 
Our gloves are stitched with special care, 

And guarded well the whalebone tips 
Where first umbrellas need repair, — 

When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot 

The power of suction to resist, 
And claret-bottles harbor not 

Such dimples as would hold your fist, — 

When publishers no longer steal, 

And pay for what they stole before, — 

When the first locomotive's wheel 
Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore ; — 

Till then let Gumming blaze away, 
And Miller's saints blow up the globe ; 

But when you see that blessed day. 
Then order your ascension robe ! 

The company seemed to like the verses, and 
I promised them to read others occasionally, if 
they had a mind to hear them. Of course they 
would not expect it every morning. Neither 
must the reader suppose that all these things I 
have reported were said at any one breakfast- 
time. I have not taken the trouble to date them, 
as Kaspail, p^re, used to date every proof he sent 
to the printer ; but they were scattered over sev- 
eral breakfasts ; and I have said a good many 



OF THE BREAKFAST'TABLE. 29 

more things since, which I shall verj possibly 
print some time or other, if I am urged to do it by 
judicious friends. 

I finished off with reading some verses of my 
friend the Professor, of whom you may perhaps 
hear more by and by. The Professor read them, 
he told me, at a farewell meeting, where the 
youngest of our great Historians met a few of his 
many friends at their invitation. 

Yes, we knew we must lose him, — though friendship may 

claim 
To blend her green leaves With the laurels of fame ; 
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 
'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. 

As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, — 
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, — 
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, 
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. 

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom 

Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall 

bloom, 
"While tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes 
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies ! 

In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, 
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, 
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, 
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue I 

Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed 
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed ! 
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, 
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his 
broom ! 



30 THE AUTOCRAT 

The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake 
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake, 
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, 
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine'. 

So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed 
When the dead summer'^ jewels were trampled and crushed : 
The true Knight of Learning, — the world holds him dear, — 
Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career I 




OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 31 




EEALLY believe some people save their 
bright thoughts, as being too precious 
for conversation. What do you think 
an admiring friend said the other day 
to one that was talking good things, — good enough ' 
to print? "Why,'' said he, "you are wasting 
merchantable literature, a cash article, at the rate, 
as nearly as I can tell, of fifty dollars an hour." 
The talker took him to the window and asked him 
to look out and tell what he saw. 

" Nothing but a very dusty street,'^ he said, " and 
a man driving a sprinkling-machine through it." 

" Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that 
water ? What would be the state of the highways 
of life, if we did not drive our thought-sprinklers 
through them with the valves open, sometimes ? 

" Besides, there is another thing about this talk- 
ing, which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for 
us ; — the waves of conversation roll them as the 
surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify 
the image a little. I rough out my thoughts in 
talk as an artist models in clay. Spoken language 
is so plastic, — you can pat and coax, and spread 



32 THE AUTOCRAT 

and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick on 
so easily, when you work that soft material, that 
there is nothing like it for modelling. Out of it 
come the shapes which you turn into marble or 
bronze in your immortal books, if you happen to 
WTite such. Or, to use another illustration, writ- 
ing or printing is like shooting with a rifle ; you 
may hit your reader's mind, or miss it ; — but talk- 
ing is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an 
engine; if it is within reach, and you have time 
enough, you can't help hitting it." 

The company agreed that this last illustration 
was of superior excellence, or, in the phrase used 
by them, " Fust-rate.'' I acknowledged the compli- 
ment, but gently rebuked the expression. " Fust- 
rate," " prime," " a prime article," " a superior 
piece of goods," " a handsome garment," " a gent 
in a flowered vest," — all such expressions are final. 
They blast the lineage of him or her who utters 
them, for generations up and down. There is one 
other phrase which will soon come to be decisive of 
a man's social status, if it is not already : " That tells 
the whole story." It is an expression which vulgar 
and conceited people particularly aflfect, and which 
well-meaning ones, who know better, catch from 
them. It is intended to stop all debate, like the 
previous question in the General Court. Only it 
does n't ; simply because " that " does not usually 
tell the whole, nor one half of the whole story. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 33 

It is an odd idea, that almost all our people 

have had a professional education. To become a 
doctor a man must study some three years and hear 
a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much 
study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but 
probably not more than this. Now most decent 
people hear one hundred lectures or sermons (dis- 
courses) on theology every year, — and this, twenty, 
thirty, fifty years together. They read a great 
many religious books besides. The clerg5', how- 
ever, rarely hear any sermons except what they 
preach themselves. A dull preacher might be 
conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi 
heathenism, simply for want of religious instruc- 
tion. And, on the other hand, an attentive and 
intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise 
teachers, might become actually better educated in 
theology than any one of them. We are all theo- 
logical students, and more of us qualified as doc- 
tors of divinity than have received degrees at any 
of the universities. 

It is not strange, therefore, that very good people 
should often find it difficult, if not impossible, to 
keep their attention fixed upon a sermon treating 
feebly a subject which they have thought vigorously 
about for years, and heard able men discuss scores 
of times. I have often noticed, however, that a 
hopelessly dull discourse acts inductively^ as elec- 
tricians would say, in developing strong mental 

3 



34 THE AUTOCRAT 

currents. I am ashamed to think with what ac- 
companiments and variations and Jionture I have 
sometimes followed the droning of a heavy speaker, 
— not willingly, — for my habit is reverential, — 
but as a necessary result of a slight continuous im- 
pression on the senses and the mind, which kept 
both in action without furnishing the food they re- 
quired to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with 
a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a 
dull speaker and a lively listener. The bird in 
sable plumage flaps heavily along his straight- 
forward course, while the other sails round him, 
over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again, 
tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, 
never losing sight of him, and finally reaches the 
crowds perch at the same time the crow does, hav- 
ing cut a perfect labyrinth of loops and knots and 
spirals while the slow fowl was painfully working 
from one end of his straight line to the other. 

[I think these remarks were received rather cool- 
ly. A temporary boarder from the country, con- 
sisting of a somewhat more than middle-aged 
female, with a parchment forehead and a dry little 
"frisette " shingling it, a sallow neck with a neck- 
lace of gold beads, a black dress too rusty for re- 
cent grief and contours in basso-rilievo, left the 
table prematurely, and was reported to have been 
very virulent about what I said. So I went to my 
good old minister, and repeated the remarks, as 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 35 

nearly as I could remember them, to him. He 
laughed good-naturedly, and said there was con- 
siderable truth in them. He thought he could tell 
when people's minds were wandering, by their 
looks. In the earlier years of his ministry he had 
sometimes noticed this, when he was preaching; 
— very little of late years. Sometimes, when his 
colleague was preaching, he observed this kind of 
inattention ; but after all, it was not so very un- 
natural. I will say, by the way, that it is a rule 
I have Ions: followed, to tell mv worst thouo-hts to 
my minister, and my best thoughts to the young 
people I talk with.] 

1 want to make a literary confession now, 

which I believe nobody lias made before me. You 
know very well that I write verses sometimes, be- 
cause I have read some of them at this table. 
(The company assented, — two or three of them 
in a resigned sort of way, as I thought, as if they 
supposed I had an epic in my pocket, and was go- 
ing to read half a dozen books or so for their ben- 
efit.) — I continued. Of course I write some lines 
or passages which are better than others ; some 
which, compared with the others, might be called 
relatively excellent. It is in the nature of things 
that I should consider these relatively excellent 
lines or passages as absolutely good. So much 
must be pardoned to humanity. Now I never 
^^TOte a " good ^' line in my life, but the moment 



36 THE AUTOCRAT 

after it was written it seemed a hundred years old. 
Very commonly I had a sudden conviction that I 
had seen it somewhere. Possibly I may have 
sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I do not 
remember that I ever once detected any historical 
truth in these sudden convictions of the antiquity 
of my new thought or phrase. I have learned 
utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to 
bully me out of a thought or line. 

This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number 
of the company was diminished by a small seces- 
sion.) Any new formula which suddenly emerges 
in our consciousness has its roots in long trains 
of thought ; it is virtually old when it first makes 
its appearance among the recognized growths of 
our intellect. Any crystalline group of musical 
words has had a long and still period to form in. 
Here is one theory. 

But there is a larger law which perhaps compre- 
hends these facts. It is this. The rapidity with 
which ideas grow old in our memories is in a 
direct ratio to the squares of their importance. 
Their apparent age runs up miraculously, like the 
value- of diamonds, as they increase in magnitude. 
A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the 
trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains 
backward through all the leaves we have turned 
over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or 
of blood is dry on the page we are turning. For 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 37 

this we seem to have lived ; it was foreshadowed 
in dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat 
of terror ; in the '' dissolving views " of dark day- 
visions ; all omens pointed to it ; all paths led to 
it. After the tossing half-forgetfulness of the first 
sleep that follows such an event, it comes upon us 
afresh, as a surprise, at waking ; in a few moments 
it is old again, — old as eternity. 

[I wish I had not said all this then and there. 
I might have known better. The pale schoolmis- 
tress, in her mourning dress, was looking at me, as 
I noticed, with a wild sort of expression. All at 
once the blood dropped out of her cheeks as the 
mercury drops from a broken barometer-tube, and 
she melted away from her seat like an image of 
snow ; a slung-shot could not have brought her 
down better. God forgive me ! 

After this little episode, I continued, to some 
few that remained balancing teaspoons on the 
edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the 
hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached 
the wall, where they left gratuitous advertisements 
of various popular cosmetics.] 

When a person is suddenly thrust into any 
strange, new position of trial, he finds the place 
fits him as if he had been measured for it. He 
has committed a great crime for instance, and is 
sent to the State Prison. The traditions, prescrip- 
tions, limitations, privileges, all the shai^p condi- 



38 THE AUTOCRAT 

tions of his new life, stamp themselves upon his 
consciousness as the signet on soft wax ; — a single 
pressure is enough. Let me strengthen the image 
a little. Did you ever happen to see that most 
soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the 
Mint? The smooth piston slides backward and 
forward as a lady might slip her delicate finger in 
and out of a ring. The engine lays one of its fin- 
gers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal ; it is 
a coin now, and will remember that touch, and 
tell a new race about it, when the date upon it is 
crusted over with twenty centuries. So it is that 
a great silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on 
us in an hour or a moment, — as sharp an impres- 
sion as if it had taken half a lifetime to engrave it. 
It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale 
professional dealers in misfortune ; undertakers and 
jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass 
out of the individual life you were living into the 
rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. 
Do the worst thing you can, or sufier the worst 
that can be thought of, you find yourself in a cat- 
egory of humanity that stretches back as far as 
Cain, and with an expert at your elbow who has 
studied your case all out beforehand, and is wait- 
ing for you with his implements of hemp or ma- 
hoffanv. I believe, if a man were to be burned in 
any of our cities to-morrow for heresy, there would 
be found a master of ceremonies that knew just 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 39 

how many fagots were necessary, and the best 
way of arranging the whole matter. 

So we have not won the Goodwood cup ; 

au contraire, we were a " bad fifth," if not worse 
than that; and trying it again, and the third 
time, has not yet bettered the matter. Now I am 
as patriotic as any of my fellow-citizens, — too 
patriotic in fact, for I have got into hot water by 
loving too much of my country ; in short, if any 
man, whose fighting weight is not more than eight 
stone four pounds, disputes it, I am ready to dis- 
cuss the point with him. I should have gloried 
to see the stars and stripes in front at the finish. 
I love my country, and I love horses. Stubbs's 
old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs over my desk, and 
Herring's portrait of Plenipotentiary, — whom I 
saw run at Epsom, — over my fireplace. Did I 
not elope from school to see Revenge, and Pros- 
pect, and Little John, and Peacemaker run over 
the race-course where now yon suburban village 
flourishes, in the year eighteen hundred and ever- 
so-few ? Though I never owned a horse, have I 
not been the proprietor of six equine females, of 
which one was the prettiest little " Morgin " that 
ever stepped ? Listen, then, to an opinion I have 
often expressed long before this venture of ours in 
England. HorsQ-racing is not a republican insti- 
tution ; \ioxsQ-trotting is. Only very rich persons 
can keep race-horses, and everybody knows they 



40 THE AUTOCRAT 

are kept mainly as gambling implements. All 
that matter about blood and speed we won^t dis- 
cuss ; we understand all that ; useful, very, — of 
course, — great obligations to the Godolphin " Ara- 
bian," and the rest. I say racing horses are essen- 
tially gambling implements, as much as roulette 
tables. Now I am not preaching at this moment ; 
I may read you one of my sermons some other 
morning ; but I maintain that gambling, on the 
great scale, is not republican. It belongs to two 
phases of society, — a cankered over-civilization, 
such as exists in rich aristocracies, and the reck- 
less life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi- 
barbarism of a civilization resolved into its primi- 
tive elements. Real Republicanism is stejn and 
severe ; its essence is not in forms of government, 
but in the omnipotence of public opinion which 
grows out of it. This public opinion cannot pre- 
vent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and 
does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. But 
horse-racing is the most public way of gambling, 
and with all its immense attractions to the sense 
and the feelings, — to which I plead very suscepti- 
ble, — the disguise is too thin that covers it, and 
everybody knows what it means. Its supporters 
are the Southern gentry, — fine fellows, no doubt, 
but not republicans exactly, as we understand the 
term, — a few Northern millionnaires more or less 
thoroughly millioned, who do not represent the 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 41 

real people, and the mob of sporting men, the best 
of Avhom are commonly idlers, and the worst very 
bad neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to 
meet in a dark alley. In England, on the other 
hand, with its aristocratic institutions, racing is a 
natural growth enough ; the passion for it spreads 
downwards through all classes, from the Queen to 
the costermonger. London is like a shelled corn- 
cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who 
could raise the money to hire a saddle with an old 
hack under it that can sit down on his office-stool 
the next day without wincing. 

Now just compare the racer with the trotter for 
a moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but 
essentially something to bet upon, as much as the 
thimble-rigger's *' little joker.'' The trotter is es- 
sentially and daily useful, and only incidentally 
a tool for sporting men. 

What better reason do you want for the fact 
that the racer is most cultivated and reaches his 
greatest perfection in England, and that the trot- 
ting horses of America beat the world ? And why 
should we have expected that the pick — if it was 
the pick — of our few and far-between racing sta- 
bles should beat the pick of England and France ? 
Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was 
nothing to show for it but a natural kind of patri- 
otic feeling, which we all have, with a thoroughly 
provincial conceit, which some of us must plead 
guilty to. 



42 THE AUTOCRAT 

We may beat yet. As an American, I hope we 
shall. As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, I 
am not so anxious about it. Wherever the trot- 
ting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omni- 
buses, lively bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, 
the jolly butcher's wagon, the cheerful gig, the 
wholesome afternoon drive with wife and child, — 
all the forms of moral excellence, except truth, 
which does not agree with any kind of horse-flesh. 
The racer brings with him gambling, cursing, 
swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters, and a 
distaste for mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues. 

And by the way, let me beg you not to call a 
trotting-match a race, and not to speak of a " thor- 
ough-bred'' as a '' blooded '^ horse, unless he has 
been recently phlebotomized. I consent to your 
saying " blood horse," if you like. Also, if, next 
year, we send out Posterior and Posterioress, the 
winners of the great national four-mile race in 
7 18 J, and they happen to get beaten, pay your 
bets, and behave like men and gentlemen about 
it, if you know how. 

[I felt a great deal better after blowing off the 
ill-temper condensed in the above paragraph. To 
brag little, — to show well, — to crow gently, if in 
luck, — to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if 
beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and I 
can't say that I think we have shown them in any 
great perfection of late.] 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 



43 



Apropos of horses. Do you know how 

important good jockeying is to authors ? Judi- 
cious management ; letting the public see your an- 
imal just enough, and not too much ; holding him 
up hard when the market is too full of him ; let- 
ting him out at just the right buying intervals ; 
always gently feehng his mouth ; never slacking 
and never jerking the rein ; — this is what I mean 
by jockeying. 

^yllen an author has a number of books 

out, a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, 
as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates ; fetching 
each one up, as it begins to '' wabble," by an ad- 
vertisement, a puff, or a quotation. 

Wlienever the extracts from a living writer 

begin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvi- 
ous reason, there is a new book or a new edition 
coming. The extracts are ground-bait. 

Literary life is full of curious phenomena. 

I don't know that there is anything more notice- 
able than what we may call conventional reputations. 
There is a tacit understanding in every community 
of men of letters that they will not disturb the 
popular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gild- 
ed celebrity. There are various reasons for this 
forbearance : one is old ; one is rich ; one is good- 
natured ; one is such a favorite with the pit that it 
would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's 
box. The venerable augurs of the literary or sci- 



44 THE AUTOCRAT 

entific temple may smile faintly when one of the 
tribe is mentioned ; but the farce is in general kept 
up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreat- 
ing and imploring a man to stay with you, with 
the implied compact between you that he shall by 
no means think of doing it. A poor wretch he 
must be who would wantonly sit down on one of 
these bandbox reputations. A Prince-Rupert's- 
drop, which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts in- 
definitely, if you keep it from meddling hands; 
but break its tail off, and it explodes and resolves 
itself into powder. These celebrities I speak of 
are the Prince-Rupert's-drops of the learned and 
polite world. See how the papers treat them ! 
What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, 
which can be arranged in ever so many charming 
patterns, is at tfieir service ! How kind the " Crit- 
ical Notices " — where small authorship comes to 
pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sap- 
py — always are to them! Well, life would be 
nothing without paper-credit and other fictions; 
so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips ; 
don't puncture their swimming-bladders ; don't 
come down on their pasteboard boxes ; don't break 
the ends of their brittle and unstable reputations, 
you fellows who all feel sure that your names will 
be household words a thousand years from now. 

" A thousand years is a good while," said the 
old gentleman who sits opposite, thoughtfully. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 45 

Where have I been for the last three or 

four days? Down at the Ishmd, deer-shootmg. — 
How many did I bag ? I brought home one buck 
shot. — The Ishmd is where ? No matter. It is 
the most splendid domain that any man looks upon 
in these latitudes. Blue sea around it, and running 
up into its heart, so that the little boat slumbers 
like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are stripping 
naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm- 
stay-sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, 
in stretches of miles ; beeches, oaks, most numer- 
ous ; — many of them hung with moss, looking like 
bearded Druids ; some coiled in the clasp of huge, 
dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where 
the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and the winds 
come so finely sifted that they are as soft as swan's 
down. Rocks scattered about, — Stonehenge-like 
monoliths. Fresh-water lakes ; one of them, Mary's 
lake, crystal-clear, full of flashing pickerel lying 
under the lily-pads like tigers in the jungle. Six 
pounds of ditto killed one morning for breakfast. 
Ego fecit. 

The divinity-student looked as if he would like 
to question my Latin. No, sir, I said, — you need 
not trouble yourself There is a higher law in 
grammar, not to be put down by Andrews and 
Stoddard. Then I went on. 

Such hospitality as that island has seen there 
has not been the like of in these our New England 



46 THE AUTOCRAT 

sovereignties. There is nothing in the shape of 
kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, 
which has not found its home in that ocean-princi- 
pality. It has welcomed all who were worthy of 
welcome, from the pale clergyman who came to 
breathe the sea-air with its medicinal salt and 
iodine, to the great statesman who turned his back 
on the affairs of empire, and smoothed his Olym- 
pian forehead, and flashed his white teeth in merri- 
ment over the long table, where his wit was the 
keenest and his story the best. 

[I don^t believe any man ever talked like that in 
this world. I don't believe I talked just so ; but 
the fact is, in reporting one's conversation, one 
cannot help Blair-ing it up more or less, ironing 
out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and 
crimping and plaiting a little sometimes ; it is as 
natural as prinking at the looking-glass.] 

How can a man help writing poetry in such 

a place '? Everybody does write poetry that goes 
there. In the state archives, kept in the library 
of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of un- 
published verse, — some by well-known hands, and 
others quite as good, by the last people you would 
think of as versifiers, — men who could pension off 
all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten 
acres of Boston common, if it was for sale, with 
what they had left. Of course I had to write my 
little copy of verses with the rest ; here it is, if you 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 47 

will hear me read it. Wlien the sun is in the west, 
vessels sailing in an easterly direction look bright 
or dark to one who observes them from the north 
or south, according to the tack they are sailing 
upon. Watching them from one of the windows 
of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, 
and moralized thus : — 

SUN AND SHADOW. 

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, 

To the billows of foam-crested blue, 
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, 

Half dreaming, my eyes will pui*sue : 
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray 

As the chaff in the stroke of the laail 5 
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way. 

The sun gleaming bright on her saiL 

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, — 

Of breakers that whiten and roar ; 
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun 

They see him that gaze from the shore ! 
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, 

To the rock that is under his lee, 
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, 

O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. 

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves 

Where life and its ventures are laid, 
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves 

May see us in sunshine or shade •, 
Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark. 

We '11 trim our broad sail as before, 
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, 

Nor ask how we look from the shore ! 



48 THE AUTOCRAT 

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate 

mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to 
break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust 
among them suddenly which tends to stop them or 
reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accu- 
mulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often 
saves a man from going mad. We frequently see 
persons in insane hospitals, sent there in conse- 
quence of what are called religious mental disturb- 
ances. I confess that I think better of them than 
of many who hold the same notions, and keep their 
wits and appear to enjoy life very well, outside of the 
asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, if 
he really holds such or such opinions. It is very 
much to his discredit in every point of view, if he 
does not. What is the use of my saying what 
some of these opinions are ? Perhaps more than 
one of you hold such as I should think ought to 
send you straight over to Somerville, if you have 
any logic in your heads or any human feeling 
in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel, 
heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most 
of mankind and perhaps for entire races, — any- 
thing that assumes the necessity of the extermina- 
tion of instincts which were given to be regulated, 
— no matter by what name you call it, — no mat- 
ter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes 
it, — if received, ought to produce insanity in every 
well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 49 

normal one, under the circumstances. I am very 
much ashamed of some people for retaining their 
reason, when they know perfectly well that if they 
were not the most stupid or the most selfish of 
human beings, they would become non-compotes at 
once. 

[Nobody understood this but the theological 
student and the schoolmistress. They looked in- 
telligently at each other ; but whether they were 
thinking about my paradox or not, I am not 
clear. — It would be natural enough. Stranger 
things have happened. Love and Death enter 
boarding-houses without asking the price of board, 
or whether there is room for them. Alas, these 
youiig people are poor and pallid ! Love should 
be both rich and rosy, but inust be either rich or 
rosy. Talk about military duty ! What is that 
to the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with 
the title of mistress, and an American female con- 
stitution, which collapses just in the middle third 
of life, and comes out vulcanized Lidia-rubber, if 
it happen to live through the period when health 
and strength are most wanted ?] 

Have I ever acted in private theatricals ? 

Often. I have played the part of the " Poor Gen- 
tleman,'' before a great many audiences, — more, 
I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not 
wear a stage-costume, nor a wig, nor mustaches 
of burnt cork ; but I was placarded and announced 
4 



50 THE AUTOCRAT 

as a public performer, and at the proper hour I 
came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon 
my countenance, and made my bow and acted my 
part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters 
so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the 
place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a 
sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen myself 
everywhere announced as the most desperate of 
buffos, — one who was obliged to restrain himself 
in the full exercise of his powers, from prudential 
considerations. I have been through as many 
hardships as Ulysses, in the pursuit of my his- 
trionic vocation. I have travelled in cars until 
the conductors all knew me like a brother. I have 
run off the rails, and stuck all night in snow-drifts, 
and sat behind females that would have the win- 
dow open when one could not wink without his 
eyelids freezing together. Perhaps I shall give 
you some of my experiences one of these days ; — 
I will not now, for I have something else for 
you. 

Private theatricals, as I have figured in them 
in country lyceum-halls, are one thing, — and pri- 
vate theatricals, as they may be seen in certain 
gilded and frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are 
another. Yes, it is pleasant to see real gentlemen 
and ladies, who do not think it necessary to mouth, 
and rant, and stride, like most of our stage heroes 
and heroines, in the characters which show off 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 51 

their graces and talents ; most of all to see a fresh, 
unrouged, unspoiled, highbred young maiden, with 
a lithe figure, and a pleasant voice, acting in those 
love-dramas which make us 3'oung again to look 
upon, when real youth and beauty will play them 
for us. 

Of course I wrote the prologue I was 

asked to write. I did not see the play, though. 
I knew there was a young lady in it, and that 
somebody was in love with her, and she was in 
love with him, and somebody (an old tutor, I be- 
lieve) wanted to interfere, and, very naturally, the 
young lady was too sharp for him. The play of 
course ends charmingly ; there is a general recon- 
ciliation, and all concerned form a line and take 
each other's hands, as people always do after they 
have made up their quarrels, — and then the cur- 
tain falls, — .if it does not stick, as it commonly 
does at private theatrical exhibitions, in which 
case a boy is detailed to pull it down, which he 
does, blushing violently. 

Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going 
to change my caesuras and cadences for anybody ; 
so if you do not like the heroic, or iambic trime- 
ter brachy-catalectic, you had better not wait to 
hear it. 

THIS IS IT. 

A Prologue ? Well, of course the ladies know •, — 
I have my doubts. No matter, — here we go ! 



52 THE AUTOCRAT 

What is a Prologue ? Let our Tutor teach : 
Pro means beforehand ; logos stands for speech. 
'T is like the harper's prelude on the strings, 
The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings 5 — 
Prologues in metre are to other joros 
As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. 

" The world 's a stage," — as Shakespeare said, one day ^ 

The stage a world — was what he meant to say. 

The outside world 's a blunder, that is clear , 

The real world that Nature meant is here. 

Here every foundling finds its lost mamma ; 

Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa 5 

Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, 

The cheats are taken in the traps they laid •, 

One after one the troubles all are past 

Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, 

When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, 

Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall. 

— Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, 

And black-browed ruffians always come to grief, 

— When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech, 
And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach, 

Cries, " Help, kyind Heaven ! " and drops upon her knees 
On the green — baize, — beneath the ( canvas) trees, — 
See to her side avenging Valor fly : — 
"Ha ! A^illain ! Draw ! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die ! " 

— When the poor hero flounders in despair. 
Some dear lost uncle turns up millionnaire, — 
Clasps the young scapegrace with i^aternal joy, 

Sobs on his neck, " My boy ! My boy ! ! MY BOY ! ! ! " 

Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night. 
Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. 
Ladies, attend. While woful cares and doubt 
Wrong the soft passion in the world without, 
Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere. 
One thing is certain : Love will triumph here ! 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 53 

Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, — 

The world's great masters, when you 're out of school, — 

Learn the brief moral of our evening's play : 

Man has his will, — but woman has her way ! ""^»-^ 

"While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire, 

"Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire, — 

The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves 

Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. 

All earthly powers confess your sovereign art 

But that one rebel, — woman's wilful heart. 

All foes you master •, but a woman's wit 

Lets daylight through you ere you know you 're hit. 

So, just to picture what her art can do. 

Hear an old story made as good as new. 

Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, 

Alike was famous for his arm and blade. 

One day a prisoner Justice had to kill 

Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. 

Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, 

Rudolph the headsnfan rose above the crowd. 

His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, 

As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. 

He sheathed his blade ; he turned as if to go *, 

The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. 

" Why strikest not ? Perform thy murderous act," 

The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) 

" Friend, I have struck," the artist straight replied 5 

" "Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." 

He held his snufiF-box, — " Now then, if you please ! " 
The prisoner sniflfed, and, with a crashing sneeze. 
Off his head tumbled, — bowled along the floor, — 
Bounced down the steps •, — the prisoner said no more ! 

Woman I thy falchion is a glittering eye 5 
If death lurks in it, how sweet to die I 
Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head ; 
"We die with love, and never dream we 're dead I 



54 THE AUTOCRAT 

The prologue went off very well, as I hear. 
No alterations were suggested by the lady to whom 
it was sent, so far as I know. Sometimes people 
criticise the poems one sends them, and suggest 
all sorts of improvements. Who was that silly 
body that wanted Burns to alter " Scots wha hae," 
so as to lengthen the last line, thus '? — 

" Edward ! " Chains and slavery ! 

Here is a little poem I sent a short time since 
to a committee for a certain celebration. I under- 
stood that it was to be a festive and convivial oc- 
casion, and ordered myself accordingly. It seems 
the president of the day was what is called a 
*' teetotaller.^' I received a note from him in the 
following words, containing the copy subjoined, 
with the emendations annexed to it. 

" Dear Sir, — Your poem gives good satisfac- 
tion to the committee. The sentiments expressed 
with reference to liquor are not, however, those 
generally entertained by this community. I have 
therefore consulted the clergyman of this place, 
who has made some slight changes, which he 
thinks will remove all objections, and keep the 
valuable portions of the poem. Please to inform 
me of your charge for said poem. Our means 
are limited, etc., etc., etc. 

" Yorfrs with respect." 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 55 



HERE IT IS, — WITH THE SLIGHT ALTERATIONS / 

Come ! fill a fresh bumper, — for why should we go 

logwood 
While the nootor still reddens our cups as they flow ? 

decoction 
Pour out the rich juIgjg still bright with the sun, 

dye-stuflF 
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the mbio s shall run. 

half-ripened apples 
The purplo globed clust e r s their life-dews have bled } 

taste sugar of lead 

How sweet is the breath of the fragrance thoy ahed -i 

rank poisons seines ! ! ! 

For summer's last roooo lie hid in the wiao e, 

stable-boys smoking long-n ines. 
That were garnered by maidono who laughed ttt r«^ thovino s. 

scowl howl scoff sneer 

Then a s mil e, and a glaoo , and a toast, and a c k o - o r^ 
strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer 
For all tlio good wiuc, aud we ^vc seme of it here I 
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, 

Down, d own, with the tyrant that masters ns all 1 
Loug Uvo t fee gay aoi vaut that laugha for uo all ! 

The company said I had been shabbily treated, 
and adWsed me to charge the committee double, 
— which I did. But as I never got my pay, I 
don't know that it made much difference. I am 
a very particular person about having all I write 
printed as I write it. I require to see a proof, a 
revise, a re-revise, and a double re-revise, or fourth- 
proof rectified impression of all my productions, 



56 THE AUTOCRAT 

especially verse. A misprint kills a sensitive 
author. An intentional change of his text mur- 
ders him. No wonder so many poets die young ! 

I have nothing more to report at this time, ex- 
cept two pieces of advice I gave to the young 
women at table. One relates to a vulgarism of 
language, which I grieve to say is sometimes 
heard even from female lips. The other is of 
more serious purport, and applies to such as con- 
template a change of condition, — matrimony in 
fact. 

The woman who " calculates " is lost. 

— — Put not your trust in money, but put 
your money in trust. 




OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



57 




III. 

HE ^'Atlantic'* obeys the moon, and its 
LuNivERSART has come round again. 
I have gathered up some hasty notes 
of my remarks made since the last high 
tides, which I respectfully submit. Please to re- 
member this is talk ; just as easy and just as for- 
mal as I choose to make it.] 

1 never saw an author in my life — saving, 

perhaps, one — that did not purr as audibly as a 
full-grown domestic cat {Fells Catus, Linn.), on 
having his fur smoothed in the right way by a 
skilful hand. 

But let me give you a caution. Be very careful 
how you tell an author he is droll. Ten to one he 
will hate you ; and if he does, be sure he can do 
you a mischief, and very probably will. Say you 
cried over his romance or his verses, and he will 
love you and send you a copy. You can laugh 
over that as much as you like — in private. 

Wonder why authors and actors are 

ashamed of being funny? — Why, there are ob- 
vious reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The 
clown knows very well that the women are not in 



58 THE AUTOCRAT 

love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the 
black cloak and plumed hat. Passion never laughs. 
The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a 
procession. 

If you want the deep underlying reason, I must 
take more time to tell it. There is a perfect con- 
sciousness in every form of wit, — using that term 
in its general sense, — that its essence consists in a 
partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. 
It throws a single ray, separated from the rest, — 
red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, — 
upon an object ; never white light ; that is the prov- 
ince of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit, 
— all the prismatic colors, — but never the object 
as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind 
of wit, is a different and much shallower trick in 
mental optics ; throwing the shadows of two objects 
so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the 
rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps 
its essential object in the purest white light of 
truth. — Will you allow me to pursue this subject 
a little further '? 

[They didn't allow me at that time, for some- 
body happened to scrape the floor with his chair 
just then; which accidental sound, as all must 
have noticed, has the instantaneous effect that the 
cutting of the yellow hair by Iris had upon infelix 
Dido. It broke the charm, and that breakfast was 
over.] 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 59 

Don't flatter yourselves that friendship 

authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your 
intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come 
into a relation with a person, the more necessary 
do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of 
necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn 
unpleasant truths from his enemies ; they are ready 
enough to tell them. Good-breeding never forgets 
that amour-propre is universal. When you read 
the story ef the Archbishop and Gil Bias, you may 
laugh, if you will, at the poor old man's delusion ; 
but don't forget that the youth was the greater 
fool of the two, and that his master served such a 
booby rightly in turning him out of doors. 

You need not get up a rebellion against 

what I say, if you find everything in my sayings 
is not exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a 
man who means to be honest for a literary pick- 
pocket. I once read an introductory lecture that 
looked to me too learned for its latitude. On 
examination, I found all its erudition was taken 
ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-na- 
tured, I should have shown up the little great man, 
who had once belabored me in his feeble way. But 
one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily 
enough, and they are not worth the trouble of put- 
ting them in the pillory. I doubt the entire nov- 
elty of my remarks just made on telling unpleasant 
truths, yet I am not conscious of any larceny. 



Go THE AUTOCRAT 

Neither make too much of flaws and occasional 
overstatements. Some persons seem to think that 
absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propo- 
sitions, is all that conversation admits. This is 
precisely as if a musician should insist on having 
nothing but perfect chords and simple melodies, — 
no diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, no flourishes, 
on any account. Now it is fair to say, that, just 
as music must have all these, so conversation must 
have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its ex- 
aggerated truths. It is in its higher forms an artis- 
tic product, and admits the ideal element as much 
as pictures or statues. One man who is a little too 
literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men 
of esprit. — " Yes," you say, " but who wants to 
hear fanciful people's nonsense ? Put the facts to 
it, and then see where it is ! " — Certainly, if a man 
is too fond of paradox, — if he is flighty and empty, 
— if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, 
those harmonious discords, often so much better 
than the twinned octaves, in the music of thought, 
— if, instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, 
stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remem- 
ber that talking is one of the fine arts, — the no- 
blest, the most important, and the most difficult, — 
and that its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by 
the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore 
conversation which is suggestive rather than argu- 
mentative, which lets out the most of each talker's 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 6i 

results of thought, is commonly the pleasantest 
and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the 
best, for two persons talking together to make 
the most of each other's thoughts, there are so 
many of them. 

[The company looked as if they wanted an 
explanation.] 

When John and Thomas, for instance, are talk- 
ing together, it is natural enough that among the 
six there should be more or less confusion and 
misapprehension. 

[Our landlady turned pale ; — no doubt she 
thought there was a screw loose in my intellects, 
— and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. 
A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish 
cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the 
melodrama, whom I understand to be the profes- 
sional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, 
with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down 
'of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping 
voce di petto, to FalstaflTs nine men in buckram. 
Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentle- 
man opposite was afraid I should seize the carving- 
knife ; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were 
carelessly.] 

I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin 
Franklin here, that there are at least six personal- 
ities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in 
that dialogue between John and Thomas. 



62 TEE AUTOCRAT 

' 1. The real John 5 known only to his 
Maker. 

2. John's ideal John *, never the real one, 
Three Johns. -<^ and often very unlike him. 

3. Thomas's ideal John ; never the real 
John, nor John's John, but often 
very unlike either. 

(1. The real Thomas. . 
Three Thomases. -{ 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 
\^ 3. John's ideal Thomas. 

Only one of the three Johns is taxed ; only one 
can be weighed on a platform-balance ; but the 
other two are just as important in the conversa- 
tion. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, 
and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have 
not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves 
in the true light, John very possibly conceives him- 
self to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and 
talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thom- 
as, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we 
will say ; therefore he is, so far as Thomas's atti- 
tude in the conversation is concerned, an artful 
rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same 
conditions apply to the three Thomases. It fol- 
lows, that, until a man can be found who knows 
himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees him- 
self as others see him, there must be at least six 
persons engaged in every dialogue between two. 
Of these, the least important, philosophically 
speaking, is the one that we have called the real 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 63 

person. No wonder two disputants often get an- 
gry, when there are six of them talking and lis- 
tening all at the same time. 

[A very unphilosophical application of the above 
remarks was made by a young fellow, answering 
to the name of John, who sits near me at table. 
A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little 
known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me 
via this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the 
three that remained in the basket, remarking that 
there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him 
that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, 
but in the mean time he had eaten the peaches.] 

The opinions of relatives as to a man^s 

powers are very commonly of little value; not 
merely because they sometimes overrate their own 
flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the 
contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those 
whom they have grown into the habit of consider- 
ing like themselves. The advent of genius is like 
what florists style the breaking of a seedling tulip 
into what we may call high-caste colors, — ten 
thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine 
streak ; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in 
old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little 
fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen 
in shop-windows. It is a surprise, — there is noth- 
ing to account for it. All at once we find that 
t^\'ice two make Jive, Nature is fond of what are 



64 THE AUTOCRAT 

called " gift-enterprises." This little book of life 
which she has given into the hands of its joint 
possessors is commonly one of the old story-books 
bound over again. Only once in a great vv^hile 
there is a stately poem in it, or its leaves are illu- 
minated with the glories of art, or they enfold a 
draft for untold -values signed by the million-fold 
millionnaire old mother herself. But strangers are 
commonly the first to find the " gift " that came 
with the little book. 

It may be questioned whether anything can be 
conscious of its own flavor. Whether the musk- 
deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquent- 
ly silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware 
of any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. 
No man knows his own voice ; many men do not 
know their own profiles. Every one remembers 
Carlyle's famous " Characteristics " article ; allow 
for exaggerations, and there is a great deal in his 
doctrine of the self-unconsciousness of genius. 
It comes under the great law just stated. This 
incapacity of knowing its own traits is often 
found in the family as well as in the individual. 
So never mind what your cousins, brothers, sisters, 
uncles, aunts, and the rest say about that fine poem 
you have written, but send it (postage-paid) to the 
editors, if there are any, of the "Atlantic," — 
which, by the way, is not so called, because it is a 
notion^ as some dull wits wish they had said, but 
are too late. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 65 

Scientific knowledge, eA^en in the most 

modest persons, has mingled with it a something 
which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremp- 
tory focts are bullies, and those who keep company 
with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind ; 
— not of manners, perhaps ; they may be soft and 
smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet asser- 
tion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy 
Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the 
most diffident of men, wears upon w^hat he very 
inelegantly calls his " mug/* Take the man, for 
instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. 
There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact ; if 
you bring up against it, it never yields a hair's 
breadth ; everything must go to pieces that comes 
in collision wath it. What the mathematician 
knows being absolute, unconditional, incapable of 
suffering question, it should tend, in the nature of 
things, to breed a despotic way of thinking. So 
of those who deal with the palpable and often un- 
mistakable facts of external nature; only in a 
less degree. Every probability — and most of our 
common, working beliefs are probabilities — is pro- 
vided with biiffb's at both ends, which break the 
force of opposite opinions clashing against it ; but 
scientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy, 
no possibility of yielding. All this must react on 
the minds which handle these forms of truth. 

O, you need not tell me that Messrs. A. 

5 



66 THE AUTOCRAT 

and B. are the most gracious, unassuming people 
in the world, and yet pre-eminent in the ranges 
of science I am referring to. I know that as well 
as you. But mark this which I am going to say 
once for all : If I had not force enough to project 
a principle full in the face of the half-dozen most 
obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would 
think only in single file from this day forward. 
A rash man, once visiting a certain noted insti- 
tution at South Boston, ventured to express the 
sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old 
woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School 
contradicted the statement, and appealed to the 
facts before the speaker to disprove it. The rash 
man stuck to his hasty generalization, notwith- 
standing. 

[ It is my desire to be useful to those with 

whom I am associated in my daily relations. I 
not unfrequently practise the divine art of music 
in company with our landlady's daughter, who, as 
I mentioned before, is the owner of an accordion. 
Having myself a well-marked barytone voice of 
more than half an octave in compass, I sometimes 
add my vocal powers to her execution of 

" Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom," 

not, however, unless her mother or some other 
discreet female is present, to prevent misinterpre- 
tation or remark. I have also taken a good deal 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 67 

of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred 
to, sometimes called B. F., or more frequently 
Frank, in imitation of that felicitous abbreviation, 
combining dignity and convenience, adopted by 
some of his betters. My acquaintance with the 
French language is very imperfect, I having never 
studied it anywhere but in Paris, which is awk- 
ward, as B. F. devotes himself to it with the pecul- 
iar advantage of an Alsacian teacher. The boy, 
I think, is doing well, between us, notwithstand- 
ing. The following is an uncorrected French ex- 
ercise, written by this young gentleman. His 
mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities ; 
though, being unacquainted with the French lan- 
guage, her judgment cannot be considered final. 

Le Rat des Salons A. Lecture. 

Ce rat 91 est un animal fort singulier. 11 a deux 
pattes de derriere sur lesquelles 11 marche, et deux 
pattes de devant dont il fait usage pour tenir les jour- 
naux. Get animal a la peau noire poi^r le plupart, et 
porte un cercle blanchatre autour de son ecu. On le 
trouve tons les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, 
digere, s'il y a de quoi dans son interieur, respire, 
tousse, eternue, dort, et ronfle quelquefois, ayant tou- 
joui's le semblant de lire. On ne sait pas sMl a une 
autre gite que 9e]a. II a Pair d'une bete tres stupide, 
mais 11 est d'une sagacite et d'une vitesse extraordi- 
naire quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. 
On ne sait pas pourquoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas 
avoir des idees. 11 vocalise rarement, mais en re- 



68 THE AUTOCRAT 

vanche, il fait des bruits nasaux divers. II porte un 
crayon dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec lequel 
il fait des marques sur les bords des journaux et des 
livres, semblable aux suivans : ! ! ! — Bah ! Pooh ! II 
ne faut pas cependant les prendre pour des signes 
d'intelligence. II ne vole pas, ordinairement ; il fait 
rarement meme des echanges de parapluie, et jamais 
de chapeau, parceque son chapeau a toujours un 
caractere specifique. On ne sait pas au juste ce dont 
il se nourrit.- Feu Cuvier ^tait d'avis que c'etait de 
I'odeur du cuir des reliures; ce qu'on dit d'etre une 
nourriture animale fort saine, et peu chere. II vit 
bien longtems. Enfin il meure, en laissant a ses 
h^ritiers une carte du Salon a Lecture ou il avait 
exists pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient 
toutes les nuits, apres la mort, visiter le Salon. On 
peut le voir, dit on, a minuit, dans sa place habituelle, 
tenant le journal du soir, et ayant a sa main un 
crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on trouve des 
caracteres inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui 
prouve que le spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs 
les Professeurs de Cambridge sont des imbeciles qui 
ne savent rien du tout, du tout. 

I think this exercise, which I have not cor- 
rected, or allowed to be touched in any way, is 
not discreditable to B. F. You observe that he is 
acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same 
time that he is learning French. Fathers of fami- 
lies in moderate circumstances will find it profit- 
able to their children, and an economical mode of 
instruction, to set them to revising and amending 
this boy's exercise. The passage was originally 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 69 

taken from the " Histoire Naturelle des Betes 
Ruminans et Rongeurs, Bipedes ct Autres/' lately 
published in Paris. This was translated into 
English and published in London. It was re- 
published at Great Pedlington, with notes and 
additions by the American editor. The notes 
consist of an interrogation-mark on page 53d, and 
a reference (p. 127th) to another book "edited" 
by the same hand. The additions consist of the 
editor's name on the title-page and back, with a 
complete and authentic list of said editor's honor- 
ary titles in the first of these localities. Our boy 
translated the translation back into French. This 
may be compared with the original, to be found 
on Shelf 13, Division X, of the Public Library 
of this metropolis.] 

Some of you boarders ask me from time 

to time why I don't write a story, or a novel, or 
something of that kind. Instead of answering 
each one of you separately, I will thank you to 
step up into the wholesale department for a few 
moments, where I deal in answers by the piece 
and by the bale. 

That every articulately-speaking human being 
has in him stuff for one novel in three volumes 
duodecimo has long been with me a cherished be- 
lief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, 
that many persons cannot write more than one 
novel, — that all after that are likely to be failures. 



yo THE AUTOCRAT 

— Life is so much more tremendous a thing in its 
heights and depths than any transcript of it can he, 
that all records of human experience are as so 
many bound herbaria to the innumerable glowing, 
glistening, rustling, breathing, fragrance-laden, poi- 
son-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling leaves and 
flowers of the forest and the prairies. All we can 
do with books of human experience is to make 
them alive again with something borrowed from 
our own lives. We can make a book alive for us 
just in proportion to its resemblance in essence or 
in form to our own experience. Now an author's 
first novel is naturally drawn, to a great extent, 
from his personal experiences ; that is, is a literal 
copy of nature under various slight disguises. 
But the moment the author gets out of his person- 
ality, he must have the creative power, as well as 
the narrative art and the sentiment, in order to 
tell a living story; and this is rare. 

Besides, there is great danger that a man's first 
life-story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his 
best thoughts. Most lives, though their stream 
is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, 
drop a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow 
along. Oftentimes a single cradling gets them 
all, and after that the poor man's labor is only 
rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All Avhich 
proves that I, as an individual of the human fam- 
ily, could write one novel or story at any rate, if 
I would. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 71 

Why don't I, then 1 — Well, there are 

several reasons against it. In the first place, I 
should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that 
verse is the proper medium for such revelations. 
Rhythm and rhyme and the harmonies of musical 
language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagina- 
tion, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness 
of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, 
transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is 
reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows 
herself under the chandeliers, protected by the 
glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snow- 
drift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, 
were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would 
be unendurable, — in the opinion of the ladies. 

Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up 
all my friends. I should like to know if all story- 
tellers do not do this ? Now I am afraid all my 
fi'iends would not bear showing up very well ; for 
they have an average share of the common weak- 
ness of humanity, which I am pretty certain would 
come out. Of all that have told stories among 
us there is hardly one I can recall who has not 
drawn too faithfully some living portrait that 
might better have been spared. 

Once more, I have sometimes thought it possi- 
ble I might be too dull to write such a story as I 
should wish to write. 

And finally, I think it very likely I shall write 



72 THE AUTOCRAT 

2l Story one of these days. Don^t be surprised at 
any time, if you see me coming out with " The 
Schoolmistress/' or " The Old Gentleman Oppo- 
site." [Our schoolmistress and our old gentleman 
that sits opposite had left the table before I said 
this.] I want my glory for writing the same dis- 
counted now, on the spot, if you please. I will 
write when I get ready. How many people live 
on the reputation of the reputation they might 
have made ! 

1 saw you smiled when I spoke about the 

possibility of my being too dull to write a good 
story. I don't pretend to know what you meant 
by it, but I take occasion to make a remark which 
may hereafter prove of value to some among you. 

— When one of us who has been led by native 
vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or her- 
self possessed of talent arrives at the full and final 
conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one 
of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions 
that can enter a mortal's mind. All our failures, 
our short-comings, our strange disappointments 
in the effect of our efforts are lifted from our 
bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, 
at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit 
to deny us the pleasant gift of high intelligence, 

— with which one look may overflow us in some 
wider sphere of being. • 

How sweetly and honestly one said to nie 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 73 

the other day, << I hate books ! " A gentleman, 
— singiihirly free from affectations, — not learned, 
of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often 
so much better than learning, — by no means 
dull, in the sense of knowledge of the world and 
society,, but certainly not clever either in the arts 
or sciences, — his company is pleasing to all who 
know him. I did not recognize in him inferiority 
of literary taste half so distinctly as I did sim- 
plicity of character and fearless acknowledgment 
of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think 
there are a great many gentlemen and others, who 
read with a mark to keep their place, that really 
" hate books," but never had the wit to find it 
out, or the manliness to own it. \Entre nous, I 
always read with a mark.] 

We get into a way of thinking as if what we 
call an *' intellectual man " was, as a matter of 
course, made up of nine tenths, or thereabouts, of 
book-learning, and one tenth himself. But even 
if he is actually so compounded, he need not read 
much. Society is a strong solution of books. It 
draws the virtue out of what is best worth read- 
ing, as hot water draws the strength of tea- 
leaves. If I were a prince, I would hire or buy a 
private literary teapot, in which I would steep all 
the leaves of new books that promised well. The 
infusion would do for me without the vegetable 
fibre. You understand me ; I would have a per- 



74 THE AUTOCRAT 

son whose sole business should be to read day and 
night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. 
I know the man I would have : a quick-witted 
out-spoken, incisive fellow ; knows history, or at 
any rate has a shelf full of books about it, which 
he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts 
and sciences; knows all the common plots of 
plays and novels, and the stock company of char- 
acters that are continually coming on in new cos- 
tume ; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an 
epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it ; 
cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in 
what he says ; delights in taking off big wigs and 
professional gowns, and in the disembalming and 
unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he is as 
tender and reverential to all that bears the mark 
of genius, — that is, of a new influx of truth or 
beauty, — as a nun over her missal. In short, he 
is one of those. men that know everything except 
how to make a living. Him would I keep on the 
square next my own royal compartment on life's 
chessboard. To him I would push up another 
pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young 
woman, whom he would of course take — to wife. 
For all contingencies I would liberally provide. 
In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive 
phrase, " put him through '' all the matefial part 
of life ; see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button- 
mended, and all that, just to be able to lay on his 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 75 

talk wlicn I liked, — with the privilege of shuttiug 
it off at will. 

A Club is the next best thing to this, strung 
like a harp, with about a dozen ringing intelligen- 
ces, each answering to some chord of the macro- 
cosm. They do well to dine together once in a 
while. A dinner-party made up of such elements 
is the last triumph of civilization over barbarism. 
Nature and art combine to charm the senses ; the 
equatorial zone of the system is soothed by well- 
studied artifices ; the faculties are off duty, and 
fall into their natural attitudes ; you see wisdom 
in slippers and science in a short jacket. 

The whole course of conversation depends on 
how much you can take for granted. Yulgar 
chess-players have to play their game out ; nothing 
short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satis- 
fies their dull apprehensions. But look at two 
masters of that noble game ! \Yhite stands well 
enough, so far as you can see ; but Red* says, 
Mate in six moves ; — White looks, — nods ; — 
the game is over. Just so in talking with first- 
rate men ; especially when they are good-natured 
and expansive, as they are apt to be at table. 
That blessed clairvoyance which sees into things 
without opening them, — that glorious license, 
which, having shut the door and driven the re- 
porter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majes- 
tic virgin ! to get off from her pedestal and drop 



76 THE AUTOCRAT 

her academic poses, and take a festive garland and 
the vacant place on the medius lectus, — that car- 
nival-shower of questions and replies and com- 
ments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany- 
like bombshells from professional mortars, and ex- 
plosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored 
fire, and the mischief-making rain of bon-bons 
pelting everybody that shows himself, — the pict- 
ure of a truly intellectual banquet is one which 
the old Divinities might well have attempted to 

reproduce in their 

" Oh, oh, oh ! " cried the young fellow 



whom they call John, — " that is from one of 
your lectures ! " 

I know it, I replied, — I concede it, I confess 
it, I proclaim it. 

" The trail of the serpent is over them all ! " 

All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have 
ruts and grooves in their minds into which their 
conversation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, 
in riding through the woods of a still June evening, 
suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stra- 
tum of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill 
layer of atmosphere beyond ? Did you never, in 
cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay, — 
where the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit 
of beating the " Metropolitan " boat-clubs, — find 
yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 77 

stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little underdone, 
through which your glistening shoulders soon 
flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities 
of full-sea temperature ^ Just so, in talking with 
any of the characters above referred to, one not 
unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of 
the conversation. The lack-lustre eye, rayless as 
a Beacon Street door-plate in August, all at once 
fills with light ; the face flings itself wide open like 
the church-portals when the bride and bridegroom 
enter ; the little man grows in stature before* your 
eyes, like the small prisoner with hair on end, be- 
loved yet dreaded of early childhood; you were 
talking with a dwarf and an imbecile, — you have 
a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before you ! 
Nothing but a streak out of a fift^'-doUar lect- 
ure. As when, at some unlooked-for moment, 

the mighty fountain-column springs into the air be- 
fore the astonished passer-by, — silver-footed, dia- 
mond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed, — from the bosom 
of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet 
batrachians at home, and the epigrams of a less 
amiable and less elevated order of reptilia in other 
latitudes. 

Who was that person that was so abused 

some time since for sapng that in the conflict of 
two races our sympathies naturally go with the 
higher ? No matter who he was. Now look at 
what is going on in India, — a white, superior 



78 TEE AUTOCRAT 

" Caucasian " race, against a dark-skinned, inferior, 
but still " Caucasian ^' race, — and where are Eng- 
lish and American sympathies ? We can't stop 
to settle all the doubtful questions ; all we know 
is, that the brute nature is sure to come out most 
strongly in the lower race, and it is the general law 
that the human side of humanity should treat the 
brutal side as it does the same nature in the inferior 
animals, — tame it or crush it. The India mail 
brings stories of w^omen and children outraged and 
murdered ; the royal stronghold is in the hands of 
the babe-killers. England takes down the Map of 
the World, which she has girdled with empire, and 
makes a correction thus : D elhi. Dele. The civ- 
ilized world says, Amen. 

— — Do not think, because I talk to you of 
many subjects briefly, that I should not find it 
much lazier work to take each one of them and 
dilute it down to an essay. Borrow some of my 
old college themes and water my remarks to suit 
yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did with their 
melas oinos, — that black, sweet, sirupy wine (?) 
which they used to alloy with three parts or more 
of the flowing stream. [Could it have been melas- 
ses, as Webster and his provincials spell it, — or 
Molossa's, as dear old smattering, chattering, would- 
be- College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in the 
" Magnalia " '? Ponder thereon, ye small antiqua- 
ries, who make barn-door-fowl flights of learning 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 79 

in '' Notes and Queries ! " — ye Historical Societies, 
in one of whose venerable triremes I, too, ascend 
the stream of time, while other hands tug at the 
oars ! — ye Amines of parasitical literature, who 
pick up your grains of native-grow^n food with a 
bodkin, haying gorged upon less honest fare, until, 
like the great minds Goethe speaks of, you haye 
" made a Golgotha " of your pages ! — ponder 
thereon !] 

Before you go, this morning, I want to 

read you a copy of yerses. You will understand 
by the title that they are wTitten in an imaginary 
character. I don't doubt they will fit some family- 
man well enough. I send it forth as " Oak Hall " 
projects a coat, on a priori grounds of conviction 
that it wdll suit somebody. There is no loftier 
illustration of faith than this. It believes that a 
soul has been clad in flesh ; that tender parents 
have fed and nurtured it ; that its mysterious coni- 
pacjes or framework has survived its myriad expos- 
ures and reached the stature of maturity ; that the 
Man, now self-determining, has given in his adhe- 
sion to the traditions and habits of the race in favor 
of artificial clothing ; that he wdll, having all the 
world to choose from, select the very locality where 
this audacious generalization has been acted upon. 
It builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, 
and trusts that Nature will model a material shape 
to fit it. There is a prophecy in every seam, and 



8o THE AUTOCRAT 

its pockets are full of inspiration. — Now hear the 
verses. 

THE OLD MAN DREAMS. 

for one hour of youthful joy ! 
Give back my twentieth spring ! 

1 'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy 

Than reign a gray-beard king ! 

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age ! 

Away with learning's crown ! 
Tear out life's wisdom -written page, 

And dash its trophies down ! 

One moment let my life-blood stream 

From boyhood's fount of flame ! 
Give me one giddy, reeling dream 
^ Of life all love and fame ! 

— My listening angel heard the prayer, 
And calmly smiling, said, 

" If I but touch thy silvered hair, 
Thy hasty wish hath sped. 

" But is there nothing in thy track 

To bid thee fondly stay. 
While the swift seasons hurry back 

To find the wished-for day ? " 

— Ah, truest soul of womankind ! 
Without thee, what were life ? 

One bliss I cannot leave behind : 
I '11 take — my — precious — wife ! 

— The angel took a sapphire pen 
And wrote in rainbow dew, 

" The man would be a boy again. 
And be a husband too ! " 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 81 

— " And is there nothing yet unsaid 

Before the change appears ? 
Remember, all their gifts have fled 

With those dissolving years ! " 

Why, yes •, for memory would recall 

My fond paternal joys ; 
I could not bear to leave them all ; 

I '11 take — my — girl — and — boys ! 

The smiling angel dropped his pen, — 

" Why this will never do 5 
The man would be a boy again, 

And be a father too ! " 

And so I laughed, — my laughter woke 

The household with its noise, — 
And wrote my dream, when morning broke, 

To please the gray-haired boys. 




8z 



THE AUTOCRAT 



IV. 




AM so well pleased with my boarding- 
house that I intend to remain there, 
perhaps for years. Of course I shall 
have a great many conversations to re- 
port, and they will necessarily be of different tone 
and on different subjects. The talks are like the 
breakfasts, — sometimes dipped toast, and some- 
times dry. You must take them as they come. 
How can I do what all these letters ask me to ? 
No. 1. wants serious and earnest thought. No. 2. 
(letter smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes ; 
wants me to tell a " good storey '^ which he has 
copied out for me. (I suppose two letters before 
the word " good '' refer to some Doctor of Divinity 
who told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand) — 
more poetry. No. 4. wants something that would 
be of use to a practical man. [Prahctical mahn 
he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged, 
sweet-scented) — ^' more sentiment,'^ — " heart's 

outpourings." 

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing 
but report such remarks as I happen to have made 
at our breakfast-table. Their character will depend 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 83 

on many accidents, — a good deal on the particu- 
lar persons in the company to whom they were 
addressed. It so happens that those which follow 
were mainly intended for the divinity-student and 
the school-mistress ; though others, whom I need 
not mention, saw fit to interfere, with more or less 
propriety, in the conversation. This is one of my 
privileges as a talker ; and of course, if I was not 
talking for our whole company, I don't expect all 
the readers of this periodical to be interested in 
my notes of what was said. Still, I think there 
may be a few that will rather like this vein, — 
possibly prefer it to a livelier one, — serious young 
men and young women generally, in life's roseate 
parenthesis from years of age to in- 
clusive. 

Another privilege of talking is to misquote. — 
Of course it was n't Proserpina that actually cut 
the yellow hair, — but Iris. (As I have since told 
you) it was the former lady's regular business, but 
Dido had used herself ungenteelly, and Madame 
d'Enfer stood firm on the point of etiquette. So 
the bathycolpian Here — Juno, in Latin — sent 
down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to" 
see that one of the gentlemen that do the heavy 
articles for the celebrated " Oceanic Miscellany " 
misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse. 
" Waft us home the message " of course it ought to 
be. Will he be duly grateful for the correction ? J 



84 THE AUTOCRAT 

The more we study the body and the mind, 

the more we find both to be governed, not hy, but 
according to laws, such as we observe in the larger 
universe. — You think you know all about walking, 

— don^t you, now ? Well, how do you suppose 
your lower limbs are held to your body ? They 
are sucked up by two cupping vessels, (" cotyloid " 

— cup-like — cavities,) and held there as long as 
you live, and longer. At any rate, you think you 
move them backward and forward at such a rate 
as your will determines, don^t you ? On the con- 
trary, they swing just as any other pendulums 
swing, at a fixed rate, determined by their length. 
You can alter this by muscular power, as you can 
take hold of the pendulum of a clock and make it 
move faster or slower ; but your ordinary gait is 
timed by the same mechanism as the movements 
of the solar system. 

[My friend, the Professor, told me all this, refer- 
ring me to certain German physiologists by the 
name of Weber for proof of the facts, which, how- 
ever, he said he had often verified. I appropriated 
it to my own use ; what can one do better than 
this, when one has a friend that tells him anything 
worth remembering ? 

The Professor seems to think that man and the 
general powers of the universe are in partnership. 
Some one was saying that it had cost nearly half a 
million to move the Leviathan only so far as they 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 85 

had got it already. — Why, said the Professor, — 
they might have hired an earthquake for less 
money ! ] 

Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bot- 
tom of many of the bodily movements, just so 
thought may be supposed to have its regular cy- 
cles. Such or such a thought comes round peri- 
odically, in its turn. Accidental suggestions, how- 
ever, so far interfere with the regular cycles, that 
we may find them practically beyond our power 
of recognition. Take all this for what it is worth, 
but at any rate you will agree that there are cer- 
tain particular thoughts that do not come up once 
a day, nor once a week, but that a year would 
hardly go round without your having them pass 
through your mind. Here is one which comes up 
at intervals in this way. Some one speaks of it, 
and there is an instant and eager smile of assent 
in the listener or listeners. Yes, indeed; they 
have often been struck by it. 

All at once a conviction flashes through us that we 
have been in the same precise circumstances as at the 
present instant, once or many times before. 

O dear, yes ! — said one of the company, — 
everybody has had that feeling. 

The landlady did n^t know anything about such 
notions ; it was an idee in folks' heads, she expected. 

The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of 
way, that she knew the feeling well, and did n't like 



86 THE AUTOCRAT 

to experience it ; it made her think she was a ghost, 
sometimes. 

The young fellow whom they call John said he 
knew all about it; he had just lighted a cheroot 
the other day, when a tremendous conviction all at 
once came over him that he had done just that 
same thing ever so many times before. I looked 
severely at him, and his countenance immediately 
fell — on the side toward me ; I cannot answer for 
the other, for he can wink and laugh with either 
half of his face without the other half s knowing it. 

1 have noticed — I went on to say — the 

following circumstances connected with these sud- 
den impressions. First, that the condition which 
seems to be the duplicate of a former one is often 
ver}^ trivial, — one that might have presented itself 
a hundred times. Secondly, that the impression is 
very evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, re- 
called by any voluntary effort, at least after any 
time has elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disincli- 
nation to record the circumstances, and a sense of 
incapacity to reproduce the state of mind in words. 
Fourthly, I have often felt that the duplicate condi- 
tion had not only occurred once before, but that it 
was familiar and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, 
I have ha|d the same convictions in my dreams. 

How do I account for it ? — Why, there are sev- 
eral ways that I can mention, and you may take 
your choice. The first is that which the young 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 87 

lady hinted at ; — that these flashes are sudden rec- 
ollections of a previous existence. I don't believe 
that ; for I remember a poor student I used to know 
told me he had such a conviction one day when he 
was blacking his boots, and I can't think he had 
ever lived in another world where they use Day 
and Martin. 

Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the 
brain's being a double organ, its hemispheres work- 
ing together like the two eyes, accounts for it. One 
of the hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and 
the small interval between the perceptions of the 
nimble and the sluggish half seems an indefinitely 
long period, and therefore the second perception 
appears to be the copy of another, ever so old. But 
even allowing the centre of perception to be double, 
I can see no good reason for supposing this indefi- 
nite lengthening of the time, nor any analogy that 
bears it out. It seems to me most likely that the 
coincidence of circumstances is very partial, but 
that we take this partial resemblance for identity, 
as we occasionally do resemblances of persons. A 
momentary posture of circumstances is so far like 
some preceding one that we accept it as exactly the 
same, just as we accost a stranger occasionally, 
mistaking him for a friend. The apparent similar- 
ity may be owing perhaps, quite as much to the 
mental state, at the time, as to the outward circum- 
stances. 



88 THE AUTOCRAT 

Here is another of these curiously recur- 



ring remarks. I have said it, and heard it many 
times, and occasionally met with something like it 
in books, — somewhere in Bulwer's novels, I think, 
and in one of the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know. 

Memory, imagination, old sentiments and associations, 
are more readily reached through the sense of smell 
than by almost any other channel. 

Of course the particular odors which act upon 
each person's susceptibilities differ. — O yes ! I 
will tell you some of mine. The smell of phos- 
phorus is one of them. During a year or two of 
adolescence I used to be dabbling in chemistry a 
good deal, and as about that time I had my little 
aspirations and passions like another, some of these 
things got mixed up with each other: orange-col- 
ored fumes of nitrous acid, and visions as bright 
and transient ; reddening litmus-paper, and blush- 
ing cheeks ; — eheu ! 

" Soles occidere et redire possunt," 

but there is no reagent that will redden the faded 

roses of eighteen hundred and spare them ! 

But, as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train 
of associations in an instant ; its luminous vapors 
with their penetrating odor throw me into a trance ; 
it comes to me in a double sense " trailing clouds of 
glory." Only the confounded Vienna matches, ohne 
phosphor-geruch, have worn my sensibilities a little. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 89 

Then there is the marigold. When I was of 
smallest dimensions, and wont to ride impacted 
between the knees of fond parental pair, we would 
sometimes cross the bridge to the next village-town 
and stop opposite a low, brown, " gambrel-roofed " 
cottage. Out of it would come one Sally, sister of 
its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, 
sad-voiced, and, bending over her flower-bed, would 
gather a " posy,'' as she called it, for the little boy. 
Sally lies in the churchyard with a slab of blue 
slate at her head, lichen-crusted, and leaning a little 
within the last few years. Cottage, garden-beds, 
posies, grenadier-like rows of seedling onions, — 
stateliest of vegetables, — all are gone, but the 
breath of a mario'old brino^s them all back to me. 
. Perhaps the herb everlasting, the fragrant immor- 
telle of our autumn fields, has the most suggestive 
odor to me of all those that set me dreaming. I 
can hardlv describe the strano^e thouo^hts and emo- 
tions that come to me as I inhale the aroma of its 
pale, dry, rustling flowers. A something it has 
of sepulchral spicery, as if it had been brought 
from the core of some great pyramid, where it 
had lain on the breast of a mummied Pharaoh. 
Something, too, of immortality in the sad, faint 
sweetness lingering so long in its lifeless petals. 
Yet this does not tell why it fills my eyes with 
tears and carries me in blissful thought to the 
banks of asphodel that border the River of Life. 



90 THE AUTOCRAT 

1 should not have talked so much about 

these personal susceptibilities, if I had not a re- 
mark to make about them which I believe is a new 
one. It is this. There may be a physical reason 
for the strange connection between the sense of 
smell and the mind. The olfactory nerve — so 
my friend, the Professor, tells me — is the only 
one directly connected with the hemispheres of the 
brain, the parts in which, as w^e have every reason 
to believe, the intellectual processes are performed. 
To speak more truly, the olfactory " nerve " is not 
a nerve at all, he says, but a part of the brain, 
in intimate connection with its anterior lobes. 
Whether this anatomical arrangement is at the 
bottom of the facts I have mentioned, I will not 
decide, but it is curious enough to be worth re- 
membering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source 
of suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now 
the Professor assures me that you will find the 
nerve of taste has no immediate connection with 
the brain proper, but only with the prolongation 
of the spinal cord. 

[The old gentleman opposite did not pay much 
attention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But 
while I was speaking about the sense of smell he 
nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded 
in getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. 
Then he lurched a little to the other side, and after 
much tribulation at last extricated an ample round 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 91 

snuffbox. I looked as he opened it and felt for the 
wonted pugil. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean 
lying therein. I made the manual sign understood 
of all mankind that use the precious dust, and pres- 
ently my brain, too, responded to the long unused 

stimulus. O boys, — that were, — actual papas 

and possible grandpapas, — some of you with 
crowns like billiard-balls, — some in locks of sa- 
ble silvered, and some of silver sabled, — do you 
remember, as you doze over this, those after-dinners 
at the Trois Freres, when the Scotch-plaided snuff- 
box went round, and the dry Lundy-Foot tickled 
its way along into our happy sensoria ? Then it 
was that the Chambertin or the Clos Vougeot came 
in, slumbering in its straw cradle. And one among 
you, — do you remember how he would have a bit 
of ice always in his Burgundy, and sit tinkling it 
against the sides of the bubble-like glass, saying 
that he was hearing the cow-bells as he used to 
hear them, when the deep-breathing kine came 
home at twilight from the huckleberry pasture, 
in the old home a thousand leagues towards the 
sunset ?] 

Ah me ! what strains and strophes of unwritten 
verse pulsate through my soul when I open a cer- 
tain closet in the ancient house where I was born ! 
On its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-mar- 
joram and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and 
catnip ; there apples were stored until their seeds 



92 THE AUTOCRAT 

should grow black, Avhicli happy period there were 
sharp little milk-teeth always ready to anticipate; 
there peaches lay in the dark, thinking of the sun- 
shine they had lost, until, like the hearts of saints 
that dream of heaven in their sorrow, they grew 
fragrant as the breath of angels. The odorous 
echo of a score of dead summers lingers yet in 
those dim recesses. 

Do I remember Byron's line about "strik- 
ing the electric chain " ? — To be sure I do. I 
sometimes think the less the hint that stirs the 
automatic machinery of association, the more easily 
this moves us. What can be more trivial than that 
old story of opening the folio Shakespeare that 
used to lie in some ancient English hall and find- 
ing the flakes of Christmas pastry between its 
leaves, shut up in them perhaps a hundred years 
ago ? And, lo ! as one looks on these poor relics 
of a bygone generation, the universe changes in the 
twinkling of an eye ; old George the Second is back 
again, an^ the elder Pitt is coming into power, and 
General Wolfe is a fine, promising young man, and 
over the Channel they are pulling the Sieur Da- 
miens to pieces with wild horses, and across the 
Atlantic the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and 
Jonathans and Jonases at Fort William Henry ; all 
the dead people who have been in the dust so long 
— even to the stout-armed cook that made the pas- 
try — are alive again ; the planet unwinds a hun- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 93 

dred of its luminous coils, and the precession of 
the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of heaven ! 
And all this for a hit of pie-crust ! 

1 will thank you for that pie, — said the 

provoking young fellow whom I have named re- 
peatedly. He looked at it for a moment, and put 
his hands to his eyes as if moved. — I was tliink- 
ing, — he said indistinctly 

How ^ What is 't ^ — said our landlady. 

1 was thinking, — said he, — who was king 



of England w^hen this old pie was baked, — and it 
made me feel bad to think how long he must have 
been dead, 

[Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a 
widow, of course ; cda va sans dire. She told me 
her story once ; it was as if a grain of corn that had 
been ground and bolted had tried to individualize 
itself by a special narrative. There was the woo- 
ing and the wedding, — the start in life, — the dis- 
appointment, — the children she had buried, — the 
struggle against fate, — the dismantling of life, first 
of its small luxuries, and then of its comforts, — 
•the broken spirits, — the altered character of the 
one on whom she leaned, — and at last the death 
that came and drew the black curtain between her 
and all her earthly hopes. 

I never laughed at my landlady after she had 
told me her story, but I often cried, — not those 
pattering tears that run off the eaves upon our 



94 THE AUTOCRAT 

neighbors' grounds, the stillicidium of self-con- 
scious sentiment, but those which steal noiselessly 
through their conduits until they reach the cis- 
terns lying round about the heart; those tears 
that we weep inwardly with unchanging features ; 
— such I did shed for her often when the imps of 
the boarding-house Inferno tugged at her soul with 
their red-hot pincers.] 

Young man, — I said, — the pasty you speak 
lightly of is not old, but courtesy to those who 
labor to serve us, especially if they are of the 
weaker sex, is very old, and yet well worth re- 
taining. May I recommend to you the following 
caution, as a guide, whenever you are dealing 
wdth a woman, or an artist, or a poet, — if you are 
handling an editor or politician, it is superfluous 
advice. I take it from the back of one of those 
little French toys which contain pasteboard fig- 
ures moved by a small running stream of fine 
sand; Benjamin Franklin will translate it for 
you : " Qiioiqu'elle soit tres solidement montee, il faut 
ne pas brutaliser la machine.'' — I will thank 
you for the pie, if you please. 

[I took more of it than was good for me, — as 
much as 85°, I should think, — and had an indi- 
gestion in consequence. While I was suffering 
from it, I wrote some sadly desponding poems, 
and a theological essay which took a very melan- 
choly view of creation. When I got better I 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 95 

labelled them all " Pie-crust," and laid them by 
as scarecrows and solemn warnings. I have a 
number of books on my shelves that I should 
like to label with some such title ; but, as they 
have great names on their title-pages, — Doctors 
of Divinity, some of them, — it would u^t do.] 

My friend, the Professor, whom I have 

mentioned to you once or twice, told me yester- 
day that someboily had been abusing him in some 
of the journals of his calling. I told him that I 
did n't doubt he deserved it ; that I hoped he did 
deserve a little abuse occasionally, and w^ould for 
a number of years to come ; that nobody could do 
anything to make his neighbors wiser or better 
without being liable to abuse for it; especially 
that people hated to have their little mistakes 
made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing 
something of the kind. — The Professor smiled. — 
Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. It 
will not take many years to bring you to the 
period of life when men, at least the majority of 
writing and talking men, do nothing but praise. 
Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little 
while before they begin to decay. I don't know 
what it is, — whether a spontaneous change, men- 
tal or bodily, or whether it is thorough experience 
of the thanklessness of critical honesty, — but it is 
a fact, that most wTiters, except sour and unsuc- 
cessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the 



96 THE AUTOCRAT 

time when they are beginning to grow old. As a 
general thing, I would not give a great deal for 
the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, 
over fifty years of age. At thirty we are all try- 
ing to cut our names in big letters upon the walls 
of this tenement of life; twenty years later we 
have carved it, or shut up our jackknives. Then 
w^e are ready to help others, and care less to hin- 
der any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. 
So I am glad jou have a little^ life left ; you will 
be saccharine enough in a few years. 

Some of the softening effects of advancing 

age have struck me A^ery much in what I have 
heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just now 
spoke of the sweetening process that authors im- 
dergo. Do you know that in the gradual passage 
from maturity to helplessness the harshest char- 
acters sometimes have a period in which they are 
gentle and placid as young children? I have 
heard it said, but I cannot be sponsor for its truth, 
that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was rocked in 
a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An old man, 
whose studies had been of the severest scholastic 
kind, used to love to hear little nursery-stories 
read over and over to him. One who saw the 
Duke of Wellington in his last years describes 
him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I 
remember a person of singularly stern and lofty 
bearing who became remarkably gracious and 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 97 

easy in all his ways in the later period of his 
Hfe. 

And that leads me to say that men often re- 
mind me of pears in their way of coming to matu- 
rity. Some are ripe at twenty, like human Jar- 
gonelles, and must be made the most of, for their 
day is soon over. Some come into their perfect 
condition late, like the autumn kinds, and they 
last better than the summer fruit. And some, 
that, like the Winter-Nelis, have been hard and 
uninviting until all the rest have had their season, 
get their glow and perfume long after the frost 
and snow have done their worst with the orchards. 
Beware of rash criticisms ; the rough and stringent 
fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter 
pear, and that which you picked up beneath the 
same bough in August may have been only its 
worm-eaten windfalls. Milton was a Saint-Ger- 
main with a graft of the roseate Early-Catherine. 
Kich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet-skinned old 
Chaucer was an Easter-Beurre ; the buds of a 
new summer were swelling when he ripened. 

There is no power I envy so much — said 

tlie divinity-student — as that of seeing analogies 
and making comparisons. I don't understand how 
it is that some minds are continually coupling 
thoughts or objects that seem not in th« least re- 
lated to each other, until all at once they are put 
in a certain light, and you wonder that you did 
7 



98 THE AUTOCRAT 

not always see that they were as like as a pair of 
twins. It appears to me a sort of miraculous gift. 

[He is rather a nice young man, and I think has 
an appreciation of the higher mental qualities re- 
markable for one of his years and training. I try 
his head occasionally as housewives try eggs, — 
give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the 
light, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual 
or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.] 

You call it miraculous, — I replied, — tossing the 
expression with my facial eminence, a little smartly, 
I fear. — Two men are walking by the polyphloes- 
boean ocean, one of them having a small tin cup 
with which he can scoop up a gill of sea-water 
when he will, and the other nothing but his hands, 
which will hardly hold water at all, — and you 
call the tin cup a miraculous possession ! It is 
the ocean that is the miracle, my infant apostle ! 
Nothing is clearer than that all things are in all 
things, and that just according to the intensity 
and extension of our mental being we shall see the 
many in the one and the one in the many. Did 
Sir Isaac think what he was saying when he made 
his speech about the ocean, — the child and the 
pebbles, you know ? Did he mean to speak slight- 
ingly of a pebble '^ Of a spherical solid which stood 
sentinel over its compartment of space before the 
stone that became the pyramids had grown solid, 
and has watched it until now ! A body which 



OF THE BREAKFASr-TABLE. 99 

knows all the currents of force that traverse the 
globe ; which holds by invisible threads to the ring 
of Saturn and the belt of Orion ! A body from 
the contemplation of which an archangel could in- 
fer the entire inorganic universe as the simplest of 
corollaries ! A throne of the all-pervading Deity, 
who has guided its every atom since the rosary of 
heaven was strung with beaded stars ! 

So, — to return to our walk by the ocean, — if 
all that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has 
raved, all that maddening narcotics have driven 
through the brains of men, or smothered passion 
nursed in the fancies of women, — if the dreams 
of colleges and convents and boarding-schools, — 
if every human feeling that sighs, or smiles, or 
curses, or shrieks, or groans, should bring all their 
innumerable images, such as come with every hur- 
ried heart-beat, — the epic which held them all, 
though its letters filled the zodiac, would be but a 
cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and 
analogies that rolls through the universe. 

[The divinity-student honored himself by the 
way in which he received this. He did not swal- 
low it at once, neither did he reject it ; but he took 
it as a pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off 
with him to his hole (in the fourth story) to deal 
with at his leisure.] 

Here is another remark made for his espe- 
cial benefit. — There is a natural tendency in many 



loo THE AUTOCRAT 

persons to run their adjectives together in triads, as I 
have heard them called, — thus : He was honorable, 
courteous, and brave ; she was graceful, pleasing, 
and virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this ; I 
think it was Bulwer who said you could separate a 
paper in the '' Rambler '^ into three distinct essays. 
Many of our writers show the same tendency, — 
my friend, the Professor, especially. Some think 
it is in humble imitation of Johnson, — some that 
it is for the sake of the stately sound only. I 
don^t think they get to the bottom of it. It is, I sus- 
pect, an instinctive and involuntary effort of the 
mind to present a thought or image with the three 
dimensions that belong to every solid, — an uncon- 
scious handling of an idea as if it had length, 
breadth, and thickness. It is a great deal easier 
to say this than to prove it, and a great deal easier 
to dispute it than to disprove it. But mind this : 
the more we observe and study, the wider we find 
the range of the automatic and instinctive princi- 
ples in body, mind, and morals, and the narro\yer 
the limits of the self-determining conscious move- 
ment. 

1 have often seen piano-forte players and 

singers make such strange motions over their in- 
struments or song-books that I wanted to laugh at 
them. <^ Where did our friends pick up all these 
fine ecstatic airs VI would say to myself. Then 
I would remember My Lady in " Marriage a la 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, loi 

Mode/* and amuse myself with thinking how 
affectation was the same thing in Hogarth's time 
and in our own. But one day I bought me a 
Canary-bird and hung him up in a cage at my 
window. By and by he found himself at home, 
and began to pipe his little tunes ; and there he was, 
sure enough, swimming and waving about, with 
all the droopings and liftings and languishing side- 
turnings of the head that I had laughed at. And 
now I should like to ask, Who taught him all 
this ? — and me, through him, that the foolish head 
was not the one swinging itself from side to side 
and bowing and nodding over the music, but that 
other which was passing its shallow and self-satis- 
fied judgment on a creature made of finer clay than 
the frame which carried that same head upon its 
shoulders ? 

Do you want an image of the human will, 

or the self-determining principle, as compared with 
its prearranged and impassable restrictions? A 
drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal ; you may 
see such a one in any mineralogical collection. 
One little fluid particle in the crystalline prism of 
the solid universe ! 

Weaken moral obligations ? — No, not 

weaken, but define them. When I preach that 
sermon I spoke of the other day, I shall have to 
lay down some principles not fully recognized in 
some of your text-books. 



102 THE AUTOCRAT 

I should have to begin with one most formi- 
dable preliminary. You saw an article the other 
day in one of the journals, perhaps, in which 
some old Doctor or other said quietly that pa- 
tients were very apt to be fools and cowards. But 
a great many of the clergyman^s patients are not 
only fools and cowards, but also liars. 

[Immense sensation at the table. -— Sudden re- 
tirement of the angular female in oxidated bom- 
bazine. Movement of adhesion — as they say in 
the Chamber of Deputies — on the part of the 
young fellow they call John. Falling of the old- 
gentleman -opposite's lower jaw — (gravitation is 
beginning to get the better of him.) Our land- 
lady to Benjamin Franklin, briskly, — Go to 
school right off, there 's a good boy ! School- 
mistress curious, — takes a quick glance at di- 
vinity-student. Divinity-student sliglitly flushed 
draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big false- 
hood — or ^ truth — had hit him in the forehead. 
Myself calm.] 

I should not make such a speech as that, 

you know, without having pretty substantial in- 
dorsers to fall back upon, in case my credit should 
be disputed. Will you run np stairs, Benjamin 
Franklin, (for B. F. had not gone right off, of 
course,) and bring down a small volume from the 
left upper corner of the right-hand shelves '? 

[Look at the precious little black, ribbed-backed, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 103 

clean-typed, vellum-papered 32ino. " Desiderii 
Erasmi Colloquia. Amstelodami. Typis Lu- 
dovici Elzevirii. 1650." Various names written 
on title-page. Most conspicuous this : Gul. Cooke- 
son E. Coll. Omn. Anim. 1725. Oxon. 

William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, 

Oxford, — then writing as I now write, — now in 
the dust, where I shall lie, — is this line all that 
remains to thee of earthly remembrance '? Thy 
name is at least once more spoken by living men ; 

— is it a pleasure to thee 1 Thou shalt share 
with me my little draught of immortality, — its 
week, its month, its year, — whatever it may be, 

— and then we will go together into the solemn 
archives of Oblivion's Uncatalogued Library !] 

If you think I have used rather strong 

language, I shall have to read something to you 
out of the book of this keen and witty scholar, — 
th6 great Erasmus, — who " laid the Qg^ of the 
Reformation which Luther hatched." 0, you 
never read his Naufragium, or " Shipwreck," did 
you ? Of course not ; for, if you had, I don't 
thmk you would have given me credit — or dis- 
credit — for entire originality in that speech of 
mine. That men are cowards in the contempla- 
tion of futurity he illustrates by the extraordinary 
antics of many on board the sinking vessel ; that 
they are fools, by their praying to the sea, and 
making promises to bits of wood from the true 



104 THE AUTOCRAT 

cross, and all manner of similar nonsense ; that 
they are fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by 
this story : I will put it into rough English for 
you. — "1 could n't help laughing to hear one fel- 
low bawling out, so that he might be sure to be 
heard, a promise to St. Christopher of Paris — the 
monstrous statue in the great church there — that 
he would give him a wax taper as big as himself. 
' Mind what you promise ! ' said an acquaintance 
that stood near him, poking him with his elbow ; 
' you could n't pay for it, if you sold all your 
things at auction.' ^ Hold your tongue, you don- 
key ! ' said the fellow, — but softly, so that Saint 
Christopher should not hear him, — ^ do you think 
I 'm in earnest ? If I once get my foot on dry 
ground, catch me giving him so much as a tallow 
candle ! ' " 

Now, therefore, remembering that those who 
have been loudest in their talk about the gi^eat 
subject of which we were speaking have not neces- 
sarily been wise, brave, and true men, but, on the 
contrary, have very often been wanting in 6ne or 
two or all of the qualities these words imply, I 
should expect to find a good many doctrines cur- 
rent in the schools which I should be obliged to 
call foolish, cowardly, and false. 

So you would abuse other people's beliefs, 

sir, and yet not tell us your own creed ! — said 
the divinity-student, coloring up with a spirit for 
which I liked him all the better. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 105 

I have a creed, — I replied ; — none better, 

and none shorter. It is told in two words, — the 
two first of the Paternoster. And when I say 
these words I mean them. And when I compared 
the human will to a drop in a crystal, and said I 
meant to define moral obligations, and not weaken 
them, this was what I intended to express : that 
the fluent, self-determining power of human beings 
is a very strictly limited agency in the universe. 
The chief planes of its enclosing 'solid are, of 
course, organization, education, condition. Or- 
ganization may reduce the power of the will to 
nothing, as in some idiots ; and from this zero the 
scale mounts upwards by slight gradations. Edu- 
cation is only second to nature. Imagine all the 
infants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo 
to change places ! Condition does less, but " Give 
me neither poverty nor riches " was the prayer 
of Agur, and with good reason. If there is any 
improvement in modern theology, it is in getting 
out of the region of pure abstractions and taking 
these every-day working forces into account. The 
great theological question now heaving and throb- 
bing in the minds of Christian men is this : 

No, I won't talk about these things now. My 
remarks might be repeated, and it would give my 
friends pain to see with what personal incivilities 
I should be visited. iBesides, what business has a 
mere boarder to be talking about such things at a 



io6 THE AUTOCRAT 

breakfast-table ? Let him make puns. To be 
sure, he was brought up among the Christian 
fathers, and learned his alphabet out of a quarto 
" Concilium Tridentinum/' He has also heard 
many thousand theological lectures by men of 
various denominations ; and it is not at all to 
the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit by 
this time to express an opinion on theological 
matters. 

I know well enough that there are some of you 
who had a great deal rather see me stand on my 
head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does 
not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two 
letters a week, requesting him to . : . . . . . ..... 

, — on the strength of some youthful antic 

of bis, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent 
constituency of autograph-hunters to address him 
as a harlequin ? 

Well,' I can't be savage with you for w^ant- 

ing to laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well 
enough, when I can. But then observe this : if the 
sense of the ridiculous is one side of an impressible 
nature, it is very well ; but if that is all there is in 
a man, he had better have been an ape at once, and 
so have stood at the head of his profession. Laugh- 
ter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the 
same machinery of sensibiUty ; one is wind-power, 
and the other water-power; that is all. I have 
often heard the Professor talk about hysterics as 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 107 

being Nature^s cleverest illustration of the recipro- 
cal convertibility of the two states of which these 
acts are the manifestations ; but you may see it 
every day in children ; and if you want to choke 
with stifled tears at sight of the transition, as it 
shows itself in older years, go and see Mr. Blake 
play Jesse Rural. 

It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man 
to indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laugh 
with him just so long as he amuses them ; but if he 
attempts to be serious, they must still have their 
laugh, and so they laugh at him. There is in addi- 
tion, however, a deeper reason for this than would 
at first appear. Do you know that you feel a lit- 
tle superior to every man who makes you laugh, 
whether by making faces or verses ? Are you aware 
that you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, 
when you condescend so far as to let him turn 
somersets, literal or literary, for your royal de- 
light ? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand 
on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on 
his neighbor who is exerting his talent for him, O 
it is all right ! — first-rate performance ! — and all 
the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at once the 
performer asks the gentleman to come upon the 
floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to 
talk down at him, — ah, that was n't in the pro- 
gramme ! 

I liave never forgotten what happened when Syd- 



io8 THE AUTOCRAT 

ney Smith — who, as everybody knows, was an 
exceedingly sensible man,* and a gentleman, every 
inch of him — ventured to preach a sermon on the 
Duties of- Royalty. The " Quarterly," " so sav- 
age and tartarly," came down upon him in the 
most contemptuous style, as " a joker of jokes," a 
*' diner-out of the first water," in one of his own 
phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as noth- 
ing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the 
anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to 
do to a man of his position and genius, or to any 
decent person even. — If I were giving advice to a 
young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to 
his mind, I would tell him by all means to keep 
his wit in the background until after he. had made 
a reputation by his more solid qualities. And so 
to an actor : Hamlet first, and Bob Logic afterwards, 
if you like ; but don't think, as they say poor Lis- 
ton used to, that people will be ready to allow that 
you can do anything great with Macbeth's dagger 
after flourishing about with Paul Pry's umbrella. 
Do you know, too, that the majority of men look 
upon all who challenge their attention, — for a 
while, at least, — as beggars, and nuisances ? They 
always try to get off as cheaply as they can ; and 
the cheapest of all things they can give a literary 
man — pardon the forlorn pleasantry ! — is the 
funny-bone. That is all very well so far as it goes, 
but satisfies no man, and makes a good many an- 
gry, as I told you on a former occasion. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 109 

O, indeed, no! — I am not ashamed to 

make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could 
read you something I haye in my desk which would 
probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it 
one of these days, if you are patient with me when 
I am sentimental and reflective ; not just now. The 
ludicrous has its place in the universe ; it is not a 
human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illus- 
trated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys 
long before Aristophanes or Shakespeare. How 
curious it is that we always consider solemnity 
and the absence of all gay. surprises and encounter 
of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of 
those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties 
and then call blessed ! There are not a few who, 
even in this life, seem to be preparing themselves 
for that smileless eternity to which they look for- 
ward, by banishing all gayety from their hearts 
and all joyousness from their countenances. I 
meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a 
person of intelligence and education, but who gives 
me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and 
chilling look of recognition, — something as if he 
were one of Heaven's assessors, come down to 
" doom '' every acquaintance he met, — that I have 
sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone 
home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. 
I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if 
he caught her playing with it. Please tell me, who 
taught her to play with it ? 



no THE AUTOCRAT 

No, no ! — give me a chance to talk to you, my 
fellow-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I 
shall have any scruples about entertaining you, if 
I can do it, as well as giving you some of my se- 
rious thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I 
know nothing in English or any other literature 
more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas 
Browne : " Every man truly lives, so long as 

HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD 
THE FACULTIES OF HIMSELF.'' 

I find the great thing in this world is, not so 
much where we stand, as in what direction we are 
moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must 
sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against 
it, — but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at an- 
chor. There is one very sad thing in old friend- 
ships, to every mind that is really moving onward. 
It is this : that one cannot help using his early 
friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his 
progress. Every now and then we throw an old 
schoolmate over the stern with a string of thought 
tied to him, and look — I am afraid with a kind 
of luxurious and sanctimonious compassion — to 
see the rate at which the string reels off, while he 
lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow ! and 
we are dashing along with the white foam and 
bright sparkle at our bows ; — the ruffled bosom 
of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of dia- 
monds stuck in it ! But this is only the senti- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. m 

mental side of the matter ; for grow we must, if we 
outgrow all that we love. 

Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving 
the log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of 
saying that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of 
movement by those with whom we have long been 
in the habit of comparing ourselves ; and when they 
once become stationary, we can get our reckoning 
from them with painful accuracy. We see just 
what we were when they were our peers, and can 
strike the balance between that and whatever we 
may feel ourselves to be now. No doubt we may 
sometimes be mistaken. If we change our last 
simile to that very old and familiar one of a fleet 
leaving the harbor and sailing in company for some 
distant region, we can get what we want out of it. 
There is one of our companions ; — her streamers 
were torn into rags before she had got into the 
open sea, then by and by her sails blew out of the 
ropes one after another, the waves swept her deck, 
and as night came on we left her a seeming wreck, ' 
as we flew under our pyramid of canvas. But lo ! 
at dawn she is still in sight, — it may be in advance 
of us. Some deep ocean-current has been mo\nng 
her on, strong, but silent, — yes, stronger than 
these noisy winds that puiF our sails until they are 
swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And 
when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton 
arms, which comes out of the mist sooner or later 



112 THE AUTOCRAT 

and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off 
panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor 
where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas ! we, 
towering in our pride, may never come. 

So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of 
old friendships, because we cannot help instituting 
comparisons between our present and former selves 
by the aid of those who were what we were, but 
are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, 
in the race of life, than to see how many give 
out in the first half of the course. '^ Commence- 
ment day " always reminds me of the start for the 
" Derby," when the beautiful high-bred three-ye^r 
olds of the season are brought up for trial. That 
day is the start, and life is the race. Here we are 
at Cambridge, and a class is just "graduating." 
Poor Harry ! he was to have been there too, but he 
has paid forfeit ; step out here into the grass back 
of the church ; ah ! there it is : — 

* " HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT 

SOCII MCERENTES." 

But this is the start, and here they are, — coats 
bright as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale 
can make them. Some of the best of the colts are 
pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their 
paces. What is that old gentleman crying about ? 
and the old lady by him, and the three girls, what 
are they all covering their eyes for ? O, that is 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 113 

their colt which has just been trotted up on the 
stage. Do they really think those little thin legs 
can do anything in such a slashing sweepstakes as 
is coming off in these next forty years ? O, this 
terrible gift of second-sight that comes to some of 
us when we begin to look through the silvered 
rings of the areas senilis 1 

Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few 
broken down ; two or three bolted. Several show 
in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, 
seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts 
commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the 
others, in the first quarter. Meteor has pulled up. 

Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassock 
has dropped from the front, and Judex, an iron- 
gray, has the lead. But look ! how they have thin- 
ned out ! Down flat, — five, — six, — how many ? 
They lie still enough ! they will not get up again 
in this race, be very sure ! And the rest of them, 
what a " tailing off" ! Anybody can see who is 
going to win, — perhaps. 

Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dives, bright 
sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, be- 
gins to make play fast ; is getting to be the favorite 
with many. * But who is that other one that has 
been lengthening his stride from the first, and now 
shows close up to the front ? Don't you remember 
the quiet brown colt Asteroid, with the star in his 
forehead ? That is he ; he is one of the sort that 
8 



114 THE AUTOCRAT 

lasts ; look out for him ! The black " colt/^ as we 
used to call him, is in the background, taking it 
easily in a gentle trot. There is one they used to 
call the Filly, on account of a certain feminine air 
he had ; well up, you see ; the Filly is not to be 
despised, my boy ! 

Forty years. More dropping off, — but places 
much as before. 

Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the 
course are coming in at a walk ; no more running. 
Who is ahead ? Ahead ? What ! and the win- 
ning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing 
out from that turf where there is no more jockey- 
ing or straining for victory ! Well, the world 
marks their places in its betting-book ; but be 
sure that these matter very little, if they have run 
as well as they knew how ! 

Did I not say to you a little while ago 

that the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes 
and analogies ? I will not quote Cowley, or 
Burns, or Wordsworth, just now, to show you 
what thoughts were suggested to them by the 
simplest natural objects, such as a flower or a 
leaf; but I will read you a few lines, if you do. 
not object, suggested by looking at. a section of 
one of those chambered shells to which is given 
the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not 
trouble ourselves about the distinction between 
this and the Paper Nautilus, the Argonauta of the 



Of THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 115 

ancients. The name applied to both shows that 
each has long been compared to a ship, as you 
may see more fully in AVebster's Dictionary, or 
the "Encyclopoedia," to which he refers. If you 
will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you 
will find a figure of one of these shells, and a sec- 
tion of it. The last wdll show you the series of 
enlarging compartments successiv^ely dwelt in by 
the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built 
in a mdcning spiral. Can you find no lesson in 
this ? 

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare. 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

And every chambered cell. 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell. 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, — ♦ 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil ; 

Still, as the spiral grew. 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through. 

Built up its idle door. 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 



ii6 THE AUTOCRAT 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that 
sings : — 

Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! 




OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 117 




LYRIC conception — my friend, the 
Poet, said — hits me like a bullet in 
the forehead. I have often had the 
blood drop from my cheeks when it 
struck, and felt that I turned as white as death. 
Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running 
down the spine, — then a gasp and a great jump 
of the heart, — then a sudden flush and a beating 
in the vessels of the head, — then a long sigh, — 
and the poem is written. 

It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you 
write it so suddenly, — I replied. 

No, — said he, — far from it. I said written, 
but I did not say copied. Every such poem has 
a soul and a body, and it is the body of it, or the 
copy, that men read and publishers pay for. The 
soul of it is born in an instant in the poet's soul. 
It comes to him a thought, tangled in the meshes 
of a few sweet words, — words that have loved 
each other from the cradle of the language, but 
have never been wedded until now. Whether it 
will ever fully embody itself in a bridal train of a 
dozen stanzas or not is uncertain ; but it exists 



ii8 THE AUTOCRAT 

potentially from the instant that the poet turns 
pale with it. It is enough to stun and scare any- 
body, to have a hot thought come crashing into 
his brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts 
where the wagon trains of common ideas were 
jogging along in their regular sequences of as- 
sociation. No wonder the ancients made the 
poetical impulse wholly external. Mr]viv cieide 
Sea ' Goddess, — Muse, — divine afflatus, — some- 
thing outside always. / never wrote any verses 
worth reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I 
ever copied any that were worth reading, I was 
only a medium. 

[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you 
understand, — telling them what this poet told 
me. The company listened rather attentively, I 
thought, considering the literary character of the 
remarks.] 

The old gentleman opposite all at once asked 
me if I ever read anything better than Pope's 
" Essay on Man " 1 Had I ever perused McFin- 
gal ? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy, 

— his mother taught him to say many little pieces, 

— he remembered one beautiful hymn ; — and the 
old gentleman began, in a clear, loud voice, for 
his years, — 

" The spacious firmament on high, 
With all the blue ethereal sky, 
And spangled heavens," 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 119 

He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a 
faint flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs 
that fell upon his cheek. As I looked round, I 
was reminded of a show I once saw at the Muse- 
um, — the Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it. 
The old man's sudden breaking out in this way 
turned every face towards him, and each kept his 
posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridg- 
et, or Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst 
out crying for a sentiment. She is of the service- 
able, red-handed, broad-and-high-shouldered type; 
one of those imported female servants who are 
known in public by their amorphous style of 
person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and 
as it were precipitous walk, — the waist plunging 
downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy 
footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for 
emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped with 
something upon the table, when I saw the coarse 
arm stretched by my shoulder arrested, — motion- 
less as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid ; she 
could n't set the plate down while the old gentle- 
man was speaking ! 

He was quite silent after this, still wearing the 
slight flush on his cheek. Don't ever think the 
poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead 
is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him 
when his hand trembles ! If they ever were there, 
thev are there still ! 



I20 THE AUTOCRAT 

By and by we got talking again. Does a 

poet love the verses written through him, do you 
think, sirl — said the divinity-student. 

So long as they are warm from his mind, carry 
any of his animal heat about them, I know he loves 
them, — I answered. When they have had time 
to cool, he is more indifferent. 

A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, — 
said the young fellow whom they call John. 

The last words, only, reached the ear of the 
economically organized female in black bomba- 
zine. — '■ — Buckwheat is skerce and high, — she 
remarked. [Must be a poor relation sponging 
on our landlady, — pays nothing, — so she must 
stand by the guns and be ready to repel board- 
ers.] 

I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for 
I had some things I wanted to say, and so, after 
waiting a minute, I began again. — I don't think 
the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly ap- 
preciated, given to you as they are in the green 
state. 

You don't know what I mean by the 

green state ? Well, then, I will tell you. Certain 
things are good for nothing until they have been 
kept a long while ; and some are good for nothing 
until they have been long kept and used. Of the 
first, wine is the illustrious and immortal example. 
Of those which must be kept and used I will 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 121 

name three, — meerschaum pipes, violins, and 
poems. The meerschaum is but a poor affair 
until it has burned a thousand offerings to the 
cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without 
complexion or flavor, — born of the sea-foam, like 
Aphrodite, but colorless as pallida Mors herself. 
The fire is lighted in its central shrine, and grad- 
ually the juices which the broad leaves of the 
Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and 
curdled into a drachm are diffused through its 
thirsting pores. First a discoloration, then a 
stain, and at last a rich, glowing, iimber tint 
spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to 
her old brown autumnal hue, you see, — as true 
in the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine 
of October ! And then the cumulative wealth of 
its fragrant reminiscences ! he who inhales its va- 
pors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath ; 
and one cannot touch it without awakening the 
old joys that hang around it as the smell of flow- 
ers clings to the dresses of the daughters of the 
house of Farina ! 

[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for 
I do not, though I have owned a calumet since my 
childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mo- 
hawk species) my grandsire won, together with a 
tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath ; paying for 
the lot with a bullet-mark on his right cheek. On 
the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver- 



122 THE AUTOCRAT 

mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a 
little box-wood Triton, carved with charming 
liveliness and truth ; I have often compared it to 
a figure in Raphael's " Triumph of Galatea." It 
came to me in an ancient shagreen case, — how 
old it is I do not know, — but it must have been 
made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time. If you are 
curious, you shall see it any day. Neither will I 
pretend that I am so unused to the more perish- 
able smoking contrivance that a few whiffs would 
make me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the 
Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that 
fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems 
and miscellaneous incombustibles, the cigar ^ so 
called, of the shops, — which to " draw " asks the 
suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and 
to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. 
I do not advise you, young man, even if my illus- 
tration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower 
of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe^ for, let 
me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding nar- 
cotic may strike deeper than you think for. I 
have seen the green leaf of early promise grow 
brown before its time under such Nicotian regi- 
men, and thought the umbered meerschaum was 
dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and 
a will enslaved.] 

Violins, too, — the sweet old Amati ! — the di- 
vine Stradivarius ! Played on by ancient maestros 



OF THE BREAKFAST'TABLE. 123 

until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying 
fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate 
young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden 
love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream 
his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous de- 
spair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold 
viiiuosOy who let it slumber in its case for a gener- 
ation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came 
forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies 
of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of 
their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with 
improvident artists ; into convents from which 
arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which 
its tones were blended ; and back again to orgies 
in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a 
legion of devils were shut up in it ; then again to 
the gentle dilettante who calmed it down with easy 
melodies until it answered him softly as in the 
days yf the old maestros. And so given into our 
hands, its pores all full of music ; stained, like the 
meerschaum, through and through, with the con- 
centrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies 
which have kindled and faded on its strings. 

Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used, 
like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as 
porous as the meerschaum ; — the more porous it 
is the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem 
is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the 
essence of our own humanity, — its tenderness, its 



124 THE AUTOCRAT 

heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be 
gradually stained through with a divine secondary 
color derived from ourselves. So you see it must 
take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into 
harmony with our nature, by staining ourselves 
through every thought and image our being can 
penetrate. 

Then again as to the mere music of a new poem ; 
why, who can expect anything more from that than 
from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's 
hands ? Now you know very well that there are 
no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. 
These pieces are strangers to each other, and it 
takes a century, more or less, to make them thor- 
oughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in 
harmony, and the instrument becomes an organic 
whole, as if it were a great seed-capsule which had 
grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. 
Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty 
years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred 
more gets tolerably dry and comparatively resonant. 

Don't you see that all this is just as true of a 
poem ? Counting each word as a piece, there are 
more pieces in an average copy of verses than in 
a violin. The poet has forced all these words 
together, and fastened them, and they don't under- 
stand it at first. But let the poem be repeated 
aloud and murmured over in the mind's mufiled 
whisper often enough, and at length the parts 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 125 

become knit together in such absolute solidarity 
that you could not change a syllable without the 
whole world's crying out against you for meddling 
with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the 
drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem 
just as in that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fid- 
dle that is just comijig to its hundredth birthday, 
— (Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760), — the sap 
is pretty well out of it. And here is the song of 
an old poet whom Neoera cheated : — 

" Nox erat, et coelo ful^ebat Luna sereno 
Inter minora sidera, 
Cum tu magnorum numen Igesura deorum 
la verba jurabas mea." 

Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old 
dead Latin phrases ? Now I tell you that every 
word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a cer- 
tain succulence ; and though I cannot expect the 
sheets of the '' Pactolian," in which, as I told you, 
I sometimes print my verses, to get so dry as the 
crisp papyrus that held those words of Horatias 
Fh\ccus, yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets 
are damp, and while the lines hold their sap, you 
can't fairly judge of my performances, and that, if 
made of the true stuff, they will ring better after a 
while. 

[There was silence for a brief space, after my 
somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident 
analogies. Presently a person turned towards me 



126 THE AUTOCRAT 

— I do not choose to designate the individual — 
and said that he rather expected my pieces had 
given pretty good " sahtisfahction/' — I had, up to 
this moment, considered this complimentary phrase 
as sacred to the use of secretaries of lyceums, and, 
as it has been usually accompanied by a small 
pecuniary testimonial, have acquired a certain rel- 
ish for this moderately tepid and unstimulating 
expression of enthusiasm. But as a reward for 
gratuitous services, I confess I thought it a little 
below that blood-heat standard which a man's 
breath ought to have, whether silent, or vocal and 
articulate. I waited for a favorable opportunity, 
however, before making the remarks which follow.] 

There are single expressions, as I have told 

you already, that fix a man's position for you be- 
fore you have done shaking hands with him. Al- 
low me to expand a little. There are several things, 
very slight in themselves, yet implying other things 
not so unimportant. Thus, your French servant 
has devalise your premises and got caught. Excu- 
sez, says the sergent-de-ville, as he politely relieves 
him of his upper garments and displays his bust in 
the full daylight. Good shoulders enough, — a 
little marked, — traces of small-pox, perhaps, — but 

white Crac ! from the sergeni-de-ville's broad 

palm on the white shoulder ! Now look ! Vogue 
la gale re ! Out comes the big red V, — mark of the 
hot iron ; — he had blistered it out pretty nearly, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 127 

— had n't he ? — the old rascal VOLEUR, branded 
in the galleys at Marseilles ! [Don't ! What if he 
has got something like this ? — nobody supposes I 
invented such a story.] 

My man John, who used to drive two of those 
six equine females which I told you I had owned, 

— for, look you, my friends, simple though I stand 
here, I am one that has been driven in his " ker- 
ridge," — not using that term, as liberal shepherds 
do, for any battered old shabby-genteel go-cart 
which has more than one wheel, but meaning 
thereby a four-wheeled vehicle ivith a pole, — my 
man John, I say, was a retired soldier. He retired 
unostentatiously, as many of Her Majesty's modest 
servants have done before and since. John told 
me, that when an officer thinks he recognizes one 
of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has 
really been in the service, that he may restore him, 
if possible, to a grateful country, he comes suddenly 
upon him, and says, sharply, " Strap ! " If he has 
ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the 
reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of 
command flashes through his muscles, and his hand 
goes up in an instant to the place where the strap 
used to be. 

[I was all the time preparing for my grand coup, 
you understand ; but I saw they were not quite 
ready for it, and so continued, — always in illustra- 
tion of the general principle I had laid down.] 



128 THE AUTOCRAT 

Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody 
thinks of. There was a legend that, when the 
Danish pirates made descents upon the English 
coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in 
the shape of Saxons, who would not let them go, 
— on the contrary, insisted on their staying, and, 
to make sure of it, treated them as Apollo treated 
Marsyas, or as Bartholinus has treated a fellow- 
creature in his title-page, and, having divested them 
of the one essential and perfectly fitting garment, 
indispensable in the mildest climates, nailed the 
same on the church-door as we do the banns of 
marriage, in terror em. 

[There was a laugh at this among some of the 
young folks ; but as I looked at our landlady, I 
saw that " the water stood in her eyes," as it did in 
Christiana's when the interpreter asked her about 
the spider, and I fancied, but was n't quite sure that 
the schoolmistress blushed, as Mercy did in the 
same conversation, as you remember.] 

That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story, — said 
the young fellow whom they call John. I ab- 
stained from making Hamlet's remark to Horatio, 
and continued. 

Not long since, the church-wardens were repair- 
ing and beautifying an old Saxon church in a 
certain English village, and among other things 
thought the doors should be attended to. One of 
them particularly, the front-door, looked very badly, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 129 

crusted, as it were, and as if it would be all the bet- 
ter for scraping. There happened to be a micro- 
scopist in the village who had heard the old pirate 
story, and he took it into his head to examine the 
crust on this door. There was no mistake about 
it ; it was a genuine historical document, of the 
Ziska drum-head pattern, — a real cutis hiimana, 
stripped from some old Scandinavian filibuster, 
and the legend was true. 

My friend, the Professor, settled an important 
historical and financial question once by the aid 
of an exceedingly minute fragment of a similar 
document. Behind the pane of plate-glass which 
bore his name and title burned a modest lamp, 
signifying to the passers-by that at all hours of the 
night the slightest favors (or fevers) were welcome. 
A youth who had freely partaken of the cup which 
cheers and likewise inebriates, following a moth- 
like impulse very natural under the circumstances, 
dashed his fist at the light and quenched the meek 
luminary, — breaking through the plate-glass, of 
course, to reach it. Now I don't want to go into 
minutice at table, you know, but a naked hand can 
no more go through a pane of thick glass with- 
out leaving some of its cuticle, to say the least, 
behind it, than a butterfly can go through a sau- 
sage-machine without looking the worse for it. The 
Professor gathered up the fragments of glass, and 
with them certain very minute but entirely satisfac- 

9 



I30 THE AUTOCRAT 

tory documents which would have identified and 
hanged any rogue in Christendom who had parted 
with them. — The historical question, Who did it ? 
and the financial question, Who paid for it ? were 
both settled before the new lamp was lighted the 
next evening. 

You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, 
touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred 
honor, may be reached by means of very insignifi- 
cant premises. This is eminently true of manners 
and forms of speech ; a movement or a phrase often 
tells you all you want to know about a person. 
Thus, " How ^s your health ? '' (commonly pro- 
nounced hadlth) — instead of. How do you do ? or. 
How are you ? Or calling your little dark entry a 
"hall," and your old rickety one-horse wagon a 
" kerridge." Or telling a person who has been try- 
ing to please you that he has given you pretty good 
" sahtisfahction." Or saying that you " remember 
of" such a thing, or that you have been "stoppin' " 
at Deacon Somebody's, — and other such expres- 
sions. One of my friends had a little marble statu- 
ette of Cupid, in the parlor of his country-house, — 
bow, arrows, wiilgs, and all complete. A visitor, 
indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the 
figure, asked the lady of the house *^ if that was a 
statoo of her .deceased infant ? " What a delicious, 
though somewhat voluminous biography, social, 
educational, and aesthetic in that brief question ! 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 131 

[Please observe with what Machiavellian astute- 
ness I smuggled in the particular offence which it 
was my object to hold up to my fellow-boarders, 
without too personal an attack on the individual 
at whose door it lay.] 

That was an exceedingly dull person who made 
the remark, Ex pede Herculem. He might as well 
have said, " From a peck of apples you may judge 
of the barrel/^ Ex pede, to be sure ! Read, in- 
stead, Ex ungue ininimi digiti pedis ^ Heixulem, ejus- 
que jxitrem, inatrem, avos et proavos, filios, nepotes et 
pronepotes ! Talk to me about your dos ttov aTc5 ! 
Tell me about Cuvier's getting up a megatherium 
from a tooth, or Agassiz's drawing a portrait of an 
undiscovered fish from a single scale ! As the " O " 
revealed Giotto, — as the one word " moi " betrayed 
the Stratford-atte-Bowe-taught Anglais, — so all a 
man's antecedents and possibilities are summed up 
in a single utterance which gives at once the gauge 
of his education and his mental organization. 

Possibilities, sir 1 — said the divinity-student ; 
can't a man who says Haow ? arrive at distinction ? 

Sir, — I replied, — in a republic all things are 
possible. But the man with a future has almost of 
necessity sense enough to see that any odious trick 
of speech or manners must be got rid of Does n't 
Sydney Smith say that a public man in England 
never gets over a false quantity uttered in early 
life ? Our public men are in little danger of this 



132 THE AUTOCRAT 

fatal misstep, as few of them are in the habit of 
introducing Latin into their speeches, — for good 
and sufficient reasons. But they are bound to 
speak decent English, — unless, indeed, they are 
rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or 
General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on 
Priscian's head are pardoned to old fellows who 
have quite as many on their own, and a constit- 
uency of thirty empires is not at all particular, 
provided they do not ^wear in their Presidential 
Messages. 

However, it is not for me to talk. I have made 
mistakes enough in conversation and print. I never 
find them out until they are stereotyped, and then 
I think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt I 
shall make half a dozen slips before this breakfast 
is over, and remember them all before another. 
How one does tremble with rage at his own in- 
tense momentary stupidity about things he knows 
perfectly well, and to think how he lays himself 
open to the impertinences of the captatores verborum, 
those useful but humble scavengers of the language, 
whose business it is to pick up what might offend 
or injure, and remove it, hugging and feeding on 
it as they go ! I don't want to speak too slight- 
ingly of these verbal critics ; — how can I, who am 
so fond of talking about errors and vulgarisms of 
speech ? Only there is a difference between those 
clerical blunders which almost every man commits. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 133 

knowing better, and that habitual grossness or 
meanness of speech which is unendurable to edu- 
cated persons, from anybody that wears silk or 
broadcloth. 

[I write down the above remarks this morning, 
January 26th, making this record of the date that 
nobody may think it was written in wrath, on ac- 
count of any particular grievance suffered from the 
invasion of any individual scarahoeus graimnaticus.] 

1 wonder if anybody ever finds fault with 

anything I say at this table when it is repeated ? 
I hope they do, I am sure. I should be very cer- 
tain that I said nothing of much significance, if 
they did not. 

Did you never, in walking in the fields, come 
across a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody 
knows how long, just where you found it, with the 
grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round 
it, close to its edges, — and have you not, in obe- 
dience to a kind of feeling that told you it had 
been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick 
or your foot or your fingers under its edge and 
turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when 
she says to herself, " It 's done brown enough by 
this time " ? What an odd revelation, and what 
an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small 
community, the very existence of which you had 
not suspected, until the sudden dismay and scatter- 
ing among its members produced by your turn- 



134 THE AUTOCRAT 

ing the old stone over ! Blades of grass flattened 
down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been 
bleached and ironed; hideous crawling creatures, 
some of them coleopterous or horny-shelled, — 
turtle-bugs one wants to call them ; some of them 
softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed 
like Lepine watches (Nature never loses a crack 
or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern bed- 
stead, but she always has one of her flat-pattern 
live timekeepers to slide into it) ; black, glossy 
crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like 
the whips of four-horse stage-coaches ; motionless, 
slug-like creatures, young larvse, perhaps more hor- 
rible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal 
wriggle of maturity ! But no sooner is the stone 
turned and the wholesome light of day let upon 
this compressed and blinded community of creep- 
ing things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury 
of legs — and some of them have a good many — 
rush round wildly, butting each other and every- 
thing in their way, and end in a general stampede 
for underground retreats from the region poisoned 
by sunshine. Next year you will find the grass 
growing tall and green where the stone lay ; the 
ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had 
his hole ; the dandelion and the buttercup are grow- 
ing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open 
and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic 
waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through 
their glorified being. 



OF TEE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 135 

— The young fellow whom they call John 
saw fit to say, in his very familiar way, — at 
which I do not choose to take offence, but which 
1 sometimes think it necessary to repress, — 
that I was coming it rather strong on the butter- 
flies. 

No, I replied ; there is meaning in each of those 
images, — the butterfly as well as the others. The 
stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature 
borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The 
shapes which are found beneath are the crafty be- 
ings that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organ- 
isms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone 
over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old 
lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a 
serious face or a laughing one. The next year 
stands for the coming time. Then shall the na- 
ture which had lain blanched and broken rise in 
its full stature and native hues in the sunshine. 
Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in 
the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then shall 
beauty — DiWnity taking outlines and color — 
light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, 
image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, 
soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which 
would never have found wings, had not the stone 
been lifted. 

You never need think you can turn over any 
old falsehood without a terrible squirming and 



136 THE AUTOCRAT 

scattering of the horrid little population that 
dwells under it. 

Every real thought on every real subject 

knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As 
soon as his breath comes back, he very probably 
begins to expend it in hard words. These are 
the best evidence a man can have that he has said 
something it was time to say. Dr. Johnson was 
disappointed in the effect of one of his pamphlets. 
" I think I have not been attacked enough for it," 
he said ; — " attack is the reaction ; I never think 
I have hit hard unless it rebounds." 

If a fellow attacked my opinions in print, 

would I reply? Not I. Do you think I don't 
understand what my friend, the Professor, long 
ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy ? 

Don't know what that means '^ — Well, I will 
tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, 
one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, 
and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water 
would stand at the same height in one as in the 
other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men 
in the same way, — and the jbols know it. 

— — No, but I often read what they say about 
other people. There are about a dozen phrases 
which all come tumbling along together, like the 
tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the 
brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic 
avalanches that everybody knows. If you get 
one, you get the whole lot. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 137 

What are they ? — 0, that depends a good 
deal on latitude and longitude. Epithets follow 
the isothermal lines pretty accurately. Grouping 
them in t^yo families, one finds himself a clever, 
genial, witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, 
distinguished, celebrated, illustrious scholar and 
perfect gentleman, and first writer of the age ; or 
a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow, ignorant, 
insolent, traitorous, black-hearted outcast, and 
disgrace to civilization. 

What do I think determines the set of phrases 
a man gets 1 — Well, I should say a set of in- 
fluences something like these: — 1st. Kelation- 
ships, political, religious, social, domestic. 2d. 
Oysters, in the form of suppers given to gentle- 
men connected with criticism. I believe in the 
school, the college, and the clergy ; but my sover- 
eign logic, for regulating public opinion — which 
means commonly the opinion of half a dozen of 
the critical gentry — is the following Major propo- 
sition. OystQTS au 7iatureL Minor proposition. The 

same "scalloped." Conc^ision. That (here 

insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, wise, 
brilliant, — and the rest. 

No, it is n^t exactly bribery. One man 

has oysters, and another epithets. It is an ex- 
change of hospitalities ; one gives a " spread " on 
linen, and the other on paper, — that is all. Don't 
you think you and I should be apt to do just 



138 THE AUTOCRAT 

so, if we were in the critical line ? I am sure I 
could n't resist the softening influences of hospi- 
tality. I don't like to dine out, you know, — I 
dine so well at our own table, [our landlady looked 
radiant,] and the company is so pleasant [a rus- 
tling movement of satisfaction among the board- 
ers] ; but if I did partake of a man's salt, with 
such additions as that article of food requires to 
make it palatable, I could never abuse him, and if 
I had to speak of him, I suppose I should hang 
my set of jingling epithets round him like a string 
of sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make 
liars of most of us, — not absolute liars, but such 
careless handlers of truth that its sharp corners 
get terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest 
among the virtues ; I trust it runs in my blood ; 
but I would never be a critic, because I know I 
could not always tell it. I might write a criticism 
of a book that happened to please me; that is 
another matter. 

Listen, Benjamin Franklin I This is for 

you, and such others of tender age as you may 
tell it to. 

When we are as yet small children, long before 
the time when those two grown ladies offer us the 
choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a youth- 
ful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, 
and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes 
are of stainless ivory, and on each is written in 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 139 

letters of gold — Truth. The spheres are veined 
and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark 
crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, 
and in a certain aspect you can make out upon 
every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The 
child to whom they are oifered very probably 
clutches at both. The spheres are the most con- 
venient things in the world ; they roll with the 
least possible impulse just where the child would 
have them. The cubes will not roll at all ; they 
have a great talent for standing still, and always 
keep right side up. But very soon the young 
philosopher finds that things which roll so easily 
are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and 
to get out of his way when he most wants them, 
while he always knows where to find the others, 
which stay where they are left. Thus he learns 
— thus we learn — to drop the streaked and spec- 
kled globes of falsehood and to hold fast the white 
angular blocks of truth. But then comes Timid- 
ity, and after her Gk)od-nature, and last of all 
Polite-behavior, all insisting that tinith must roll, 
or nobody can do anything with it; and so the 
first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her 
broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do 
so round off" and smooth and polish the snow- 
white cubes of truth, that, when they have got a 
little dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them 
from the rolling spheres of falsehood. 



I40 THE AUTOCRAT 

The schoolmistress was polite enough to say 
that she was pleased with this, and that she would 
read it to her little flock the next day. But she 
should tell the children, she said, that there were 
better reasons for truth than could be found in 
mere experience of its convenience and the incon- 
venience of lying. 

Yes, — I said, — but education always begins 
through the senses, and works up to the idea of 
absolute right and wrong. The first thing the 
child has to learn about this matter is, that lying 
is unprofitable, — afterwards, that it is against 
the peace and dignity of the universe. 

Do I think that the particular form Of 

lying often seen in newspapers, under the title, 
'* From our Foreign Correspondent," does any 
harm? — Why, no, — I don't know that it does. 
I suppose it does n't really deceive people any 
more than the " Arabian Nights " or " Gulliver's 
Travels " do. Sometimes the writers compile too 
carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geog- 
raphies, and stories out of the penny papers, so 
as to mislead those who are desirous of infor- 
mation. I cut a piece 'out of one of the pa- 
pers, the other day, which contains a number 
of improbabilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. 
I will send up and get it for you, if you 

would like to hear it. Ah, this is it; it is 

headed 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 141 
"Our Sumatra Correspondence. 

" This island is now the property of the Stam- 
ford family, — having been won, it is said, in a 
raffle, by Sir x Stamford, during the stock- 
gambling mania of the South- Sea Scheme. The 
liistory of this gentleman may be found in an in- 
teresting series of questions (unfortunately not yet 
answered) contained in the ' Notes and Queries.' 
This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, 
which here contains a large amount of saline sub- 
stance, crystallizing in cubes remarkable for their 
symmetry, and frequently displays on its surface, 
during calm weather, the rainbow tints of the 
celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The summers are 
oppressively hot, and the winters very probably 
cold ; but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, 
as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these 
latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern re- 
gions, and thus the thermometer is rendered use- 
less in winter. 

" The principal vegetable productions of the 
island are the pepper-tree and the bread-fruit tree. 
Pepper being very abundantly produced, a benev- 
olent society was organized in London during the 
last century for supplying the natives with vine- 
gar and oysters, as an addition to that delightful 
condiment. [Note received from Dr. D. P.] It 
is said, however, that, as the oysters were of the 



142 THE AUTOCRAT 

kind called natives in England, the natives of 
Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct, re- 
fused to touch them, and confined themselves en- 
tirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were 
brought over. This information was received 
from one of the oldest inhabitants, a native him- 
self, and exceedingly fond of missionaries. He is 
said also to be very skilful in the cuisine peculiar 
to the island. 

"During the season of gathering the pepper, 
the persons employed are subject to various in- 
coramodities, the chief of which is violent and 
long-continued sternutation, or sneezing. Such 
is the vehemence of these attacks, that the unfor- 
tunate subjects of them are often driven backwards 
for great distances at immense speed, on the well- 
known principle of the geolipile. Not being able 
to see where they are going, these poor creatures 
dash themselves to pieces against the rocks or are 
precipitated over the cliffs, and thus many valu- 
able lives are lost annually. As, during the whole 
pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stim- 
ulant, the^ become exceedingly irritable. The 
smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. 
A young man suffering from the pepper-fever, as 
it is called, cudgelled another most severely for 
appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling 
value, and was only pacified by having a present 
macle him of a pig of that peculiar species of 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 143 

swine called the Peccavi by the Catholic Jews, 
who, it is well known, abstain from swine's flesh 
in imitation of the Mahometan Buddhists. 

'' The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branch- 
es are well known to Europe and America under 
the familiar name of maccaroni. The smaller 
twigs are called vermicelli. They have a decided 
animal flavor, as may be observed in the soups 
containing them. Maccaroni, being tubular, is 
the favorite habitat of a very dangerous insect, 
which is rendered peculiarly ferocious by being 
boiled. Tl>e government of tlie island, therefore, 
never allows a stick of it to be exported without 
being accompanied by a piston with which its 
cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out. 
These are commonly lost or stolen before the 
maccaroni arrives among us. It therefore always 
contains many of these insects, which, however, 
generally die of old age in the shops, so that acci- 
dents from this source are comparatively rare. 

" The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally 
of hot rolls. The buttered-muffin variety is sup- 
posed to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, 
the cream found on the milk of the cocoa-nut ex- 
uding from the hybrid in the shape of butter, just 
as the ripe fruit is splitting, so as to fit it for 
the tea-table, where it is commonly served up with 
cold " 

There, — I don't want to read any more 



144 . '^HE AUTOCRAT 

of it. You see that many of these statements are 
highly improbable. — No, I shall not mention the 
paper. — No, neither of them wrote it, though it 
reminds me of the style of these popular writers. 
I think the fellow who wrote it must have been 
reading some of their stories, and got them mixed 
up with his history and geography. I don't sup- 
pose he lies ; — he sells it to the editor, who knows 
how many squares off ^^ Sumatra '^ is. The edi- 
tor, who sells it to the public By the way, 

the papers have been very civil — have n't they ? — 
to the — the — what d' ye call it '^ — " Northern 
Magazine," — is n't it ? — got up by some of those 
Come-outers, down East, as an organ for their 
local peculiarities. 

The Professor has been to see me. Came 

in, glorious, at about twelve o'clock, last night. 
Said he had been with " the boys." On inquiry, 
found that " the boys " were certain baldish and 
grayish old gentlemen that one sees or hears of 
in various important stations of society. The 
Professor is one of the same set, but he always 
talks as if he had been out of college about ten 

years, whereas [Each of these 

dots was a little nod, which the company under- 
stood, as the reader will, no doubt.] He calls 
them sometimes " the boys," and sometimes " the 
old fellows." Call him by the latter title, and see 
how he likes it. — Well, he came in last night 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 145 

glorious, as I was saying. Of course I don't 
mean vinously exalted; he drinks little wine ou 
such occasions, and is well known to all the Peters 
and Patricks as the gentleman who always has 
indefinite quantities of black tea to kill any extra 
glass of red claret he may have swallowed. But 
the Professor says he always gets tipsy on old 
memories at these gatherings. He was, I forget 
how many years old when he went to the meet- 
ing ; just turned of twenty now, — he said. He 
made various youthful proposals to me, including 
a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. 
He had just learned a trick, he said, of one of 
" the boys," of getting a splendid bass out of a 
door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of his 
hand. Offered to sing " The sky is bright," ac- 
companying himself on the front-door, if I would 
go down and help in the chorus. Said there 
never was such a set of fellows as the old boys 
of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, 
Congressmen, Mr. Speakers, leaders in science, 
clergymen better than famous, and famous too, 
poets by the half-dozen, singers with voices like 
angels, financiers, wits, three of the best laughers 
in the Commonwealth, engineers, agriculturists, — 
all forms of talent and knowledge he pretended 
were represented in that meeting. Then he be- 
gan to quote Byron about Santa Croce, and main- 
tained that he could " furnish out creation " in all 
10 



146 THE AUTOCRAT 

its details from that set of his. He would like to 
have the whole boodle of them, (I remonstrated 
against this word, but the Professor said it was a 
diabolish good word, and he would have no other,) 
with their wives and children, shipwrecked on a 
remote island, just to see how splendidly they 
would reorganize society. They could ^build a 
city, — they have done it ; make constitutions and 
laws ; establish churches and lyceums ; teach and 
practise the healing art ; instruct in every depart- 
ment ; found observatories ; create commerce and 
manufactures ; write songs and hymns, and sing 
'em, and make instruments to accompany the 
songs with; lastly, publish a journal almost as 
good as the " Northern Magazine," edited by the 
Come-outers. There was nothing they were not 
up to, from a christening to a hanging ; the last, 
to be sure, could never be called for, unless some 
stranger got in among them. 

I let the Professor talk as long as he liked ; 

it did n't make much difference to me whether it 
was all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry 
and similar elements. All at once he jumped up 
and said, — 

Don't you want to hear what I just read to the 
boys ? 

I have had questions of a similar character 
asked me before, occasionally. A man of iron 
mould might perhaps say, No ! I am not a man 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 147 

of iron mould, and said that I should be de- 
lighted. 

The Professor then read — with that slightly- 
sing-song cadence which is observed to be com- 
mon in poets reading their own verses — the fol- 
lowing stanzas ; holding them at a focal distance 
of about two feet and a half, with an occasional 
movement back or forward for better adjustment, 
the appearance of which has been likened by some 
impertinent young folks to that of the act of play- 
ing on the trombone. His eyesight was never 
better; I have his word for it. 

MARE RUBRUM. ^ 

Flash out a stream of blood-red wine ! — 

For I would drink to othier days •, 
And brighter shall their memory shine, 

Seen flaming through its crimson blaze. 
The roses die, the summers fade 5 

But every ghost of boyhood's dream 
By Nature's magic power is laid 

To sleep beneath this blood-red stream. 

It filled the purple grapes that lay 

And drank the splendors of the sun 
Where the long summer's cloudless day 

Is mirrored in the broad Garonne 5 
It pictures still the bacchant shapes 

That saw their hoarded sunlight shed, — 
The maidens dancing on the grapes, — 

Their milk-white ankles splashed with red. 

Beneath these waves of crimson lie, v 

In rosy fetters prisoned fast. 
Those flitting shapes that never die, 

The swift-winged visions of the past. 



148 THE AUTOCRAT 

Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, 
Each shadow rends its flowery chain, 

Springs in a bubble from its brim 
And walks the chambers of the brain. 

Poor Beauty ! time and fortune's wrong 

No form nor feature may withstand, — 
Thy wrecks are scattered all along, 

Like emptied sea-shells on the sand ; — 
Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain, 

The dust restores each blooming girl, 
As if the sea-shells moved again 

Their glistening lips of pink and pearl. 

Here lies the home of school-boy life, 

With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, 
And, scarred by many a truant knife, 

Our old initials on the wall ; 
Here rest — their keen vibrations mute — 

The shout of voices known so well, 
The ringing laugh, the wailing flute. 

The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell. 

Here, clad in burning robes, are laid 

Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed *, 
And here those cherished forms have strayed 

We miss awhile, and call them dead. 
What wizard fills the maddening glass ? 

What soil the enchanted clusters grew, 
That buried passions wake and pass 

In beaded drops of fiery dew ? 

Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine, — 

Our hearts can boast a warmer glow, 
Filled from a vintage more divine, — 

Calmejl, but not chilled by winter's snow ! 
To-night the palest wave we sip 

Rich as the priceless draught shall be 
That wet the bride of Cana's lip, — 

The wedding wine of Galilee ! 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 149 




VI. 

IN has many tools, but a lie is thaC 
handle which fits them all. 

I think, sir, — said the divinity- 
student, — you must intend that for 
one of the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of 
Boston you were speaking of the other day. 

I thank you, my young friend, — was my re- 
ply, — but I must say something better than that, 
before I could pretend to fill out the number. 

The schoolmistress wanted to know how 

many of these sayings there were on record, and 
what, and by whom said. 

Why, let us see, — there is that one of 

Benjamin Franklin, ^' the great Bostonian," after 
whom this lad was named. To be sure, he said a 
great many wise things, — and I don't feel sure he 
did n't borrow this, — he speaks as if it were old. 
But then he applied it so neatly ! — 

" He that has once done you a kindness will be 
more ready to do you another than he whom you 
yourself have obliged." 

Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, 
uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his 
flashing moments: — 



I50 THE AUTOCRAT 

*' Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dis- 
pense with its necessaries/' 

To these must certainly be added that other 
saying of one of the wittiest of men : — 

*' Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris/* 

The divinity-student looked grave at this, 

but said nothing. 

The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she 
did n't think the wit meant any irreverence. It 
was only another way of saying, Paris is a heav- 
enly place after New York or Boston. 

A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with 
the young fellow they call John, — evidently a 
stranger, — said there was one more wise man's 
saying that he had heard : it was about our place, 
but he did n't know who said it. — A civil curios- 
ity was manifested by the company to hear the 
fourth wise saying. I heard him distinctly whis- 
pering to the young fellow who brought him to 
dinner. Shall I tell it ? To which the answer was, 
Go ahead! — Well, — he said, — this is what I 
heard : — 

"Boston State-House is the hub of the solar 
system. You could n't pry that out of a Boston 
man, if you had the tire of all creation straight- 
ened out for a crowbar." 

Sir, — said I, — I am gratified with your re- 
mark. It expresses with pleasing vivacity that 
which I have sometimes heard uttered with ma- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 151 

liffnant dulness. The satire of the remark is es- 
sentially true of Boston, — and of all other con- 
siderable — and inconsiderable — places with which 
I have had the privilege of being acquainted. 
Cockneys think London is the only place in the 
world. Frenchmen — you remember the line 
about Paris, the Court, the World, etc. — I recol- 
lect well, by the way, a sign in that city which 
ran thus : "Hotel de TUnivers et des Etats Unis " ; 
and as Paris is the universe to a Frenchman, of 
course the United States are outside of it. — " See 
Naples and then die." — It is quite as bad with 
smaller places. I have been about, lecturing, you 
know, and have found the following propositions 
to hold true of all of them. 

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly 
through the centre of each and every town or 
city. 

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its 
foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhab- 
itants the ^^ good old town of" (whatever its 

name may happen to be.) 

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes 
together to listen to a stranger is invariably de- 
clared to be a ^' remarkably intelligent audience." 

4. The climate of the place is particularly fa- 
vorable to longevity. 

5. It contains several persons of vast talent lit- 
tle known to the world. (One or two of them. 



152 THE AUTOCRAT 

you may perhaps chance to remember, sent short 
pieces to the " Pactolian ^' some time since, which 
were " respectfully declined.") 

Boston is just like other places of its size; — 
only perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, 
paid fire-department, superior monthly publica- 
tions, and correct habit of spelling the English 
language, it has some right to look down on the 
mob of cities. I ^11 tell you, though, if you w^ant 
to know it, what is the real offence of Boston. It 
drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will 
not itself be drained. If it would only send away 
its first-rate men, instead of its second-rate ones, 
(no offence to the well-known exceptions, of which 
we are always proud,) we should be spared such 
epigrammatic remarks as that which the gentle- 
man has quoted. There can never be a real me- 
tropolis in this country, until the biggest centre 
can drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth. 
— I have observed, by the way, that the people 
who really live in two great cities are by no 
means so jealous of each other, as are those of 
smaller cities situated within the intellectual basin, 
or suction-range, of one large one, of the pretensions 
of any other. Don't you see why ? Because their 
promising young author and rising lawyer and 
large capitalist have been drained off to the neigh- 
boring big city, — their prettiest girl has been ex- 
ported to the same market; all their ambition 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 153 

points there, and all their thin gilding of glory- 
comes from there. I hate little toad-eating cities. 

Would I be so good as to specify any par- 
ticular example ? — O, — an example ? Did you 
ever see a bear-trap 1 Never 1 Well, should n't 
you like to see me put my foot into one ? With 
sentiments of the highest consideration I must 
beg leave to be excused. 

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charm- 
ing. If they have an old church or two, a few 
stately mansions of former grandees, here and there 
an old dwelUng with the second story projecting, 
(for the convenience of shooting the Indians knock- 
ing at the front-door with their tomahawks, ) — if 
they have, scattered about, those mighty square 
houses built something more than half a century 
ago, and standing like architectural bowlders 
dropped by the former diluvium of wealth, whose 
refluent wave has left them as its monument, — 
if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees that 
push their branches over the high board-fence and 
drop their fruit on the sidewalk, — if they have a 
little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken 
quiet without proclaiming decay, — I think I could 
go to pieces, after my life's work were done, in one 
of those tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cra- 
dle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in. I 
visit such spots always with infinite delight. My 
friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns 



154 THE AUTOCRAT 

are most unfavorable to the imaginative and re- 
flective faculties. Let a man live in one of these 
old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his soul, 
which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy 
streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, you may 
see the sun through it by day and the stars by 
night. 

Do I think that the little villages have the 

conceit of the great towns ? — I don^t believe there 
is much diiFerence. You know how they read 
Pope's line in the smallest town in our State of 
Massachusetts ? — Well, they read it 

" All are but parts of one stupendous Hull ! " 

Every person's feelings have a front-door 

and a side-door by which they may be entered. 
The front-door is on the street. Some keep it al- 
ways open ; some keep it latched ; some, locked ; 
some, bolted, — with a chain that will let you peep 
in, but not get in ; and some nail it up, so that 
nothing can pass its threshold. This front-door 
leads into a passage which opens into an anteroom, 
and this into the interior apartments. The side- 
door opens at once into the sacred chambers. 

There is almost always at least one key to this 
side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a 
mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and 
friends, often, but by no means so universally, have 
duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right 
to one ; alas, if none is given with it ! 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 155 

If nature or accident has put one of these keys 
into the hands of a person who has the torturing 
instinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words 
that Justice litters over its doomed victim, — The 
Lord have mercy on your soul I You will probably 
go mad within a reasonable time, — or, if you are 
a man, run off and die with your head on a curb- 
stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco, — or, if you 
are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or 
turn into a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves 
about as if it were alive, or play some real life- 
tragedy or other. 

Be very careful to whom you trust one of these 
keys of the side-door. The fact of possessing one 
renders those even who are dear to you very terri- 
ble at times. You can keep the world out from 
your front-door, or receive visitors only when you 
are ready for them ; but those of your own flesh 
and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can 
come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour 
and in any mood. Some of them have a scale of 
your whole nervous system, and can play all the 
gamut of your sensibilities in semitones, — touch- 
ing the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the 
keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there 
are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieux- 
temps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. 
Married life is the school in which the most ac- 
complished artists in this department are found. 



156 THE AUTOCRAT 

A delicate woman is the best instrument ; she has 
such a magnificent compass of sensibilities ! From 
the deep inward moan which follows pressure on 
the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the 
filaments of taste are struck with a crashing sweep, 
is a range which no other instrument possesses. 
A few exercises on it daily at home fit a man won- 
derfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him 
immensely as he returns from them. No stranger 
can get a great many notes of torture out of a hu- 
man soul ; it takes one that knows it well, — parent, 
child, brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to 
whom you give a side-door key ; too many have 
them already. 

You remember the old story of the tender- 
hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bo- 
som, and was stung by it when it became thawed ? 
If we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, 
better that it should sting us and we should die 
than that its chill should slowly steal into our 
hearts ; warm it we never can ! I have seen faces 
of women that were fair to look upon, yet one 
could see that the icicles were forming round these 
women's hearts. I knew what freezing image lay 
on the white breasts beneath the laces ! 

A very simple intellectual mechanism answers 
the necessities of friendship, and even of the most 
intimate relations of life. If a watch tells us the 
hour and minute, we can be content to carry it 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 157 

about w-ith us for a lifetime, though it has no sec- 
ond-hand and is not a repeater, nor a musical 
watch, — though it is not enamelled nor jewelled, 
— in short, though it has little beyond the wheels 
required for a trustworthy instrument, added to a 
good face and a pair of useful hands. The more 
wheels there are in a watch or a brain, the more 
trouble they are to take care of. The movements 
of exaltation which belong to genius are egotistic 
by their very nature. A calm, clear mind, not 
subject to the spasms and crises which are so often 
met with in creative or intensely perceptive na- 
tures, is the best basis for love or friendship. — Ob- 
serve, I am talking about minds, I won't say, the 
more intellect, the less capacity for loving ; for 
that would do wrong to the understanding and 
reason ; — but, on the other hand, that the brain 
often runs away with the heart's best blood, which 
gives the world a few pages of wisdom or senti- 
ment or poetry, instead of making one other heart 
happy, I have no question. 

If one's intimate in love or friendship cannot or 
does not share all one's intellectual tastes or pur- 
suits, that is a small matter. Intellectual com- 
panions can be found easily in men and books. 
After all, if we think of it, most of the world's 
loves and friendships have been between people 
that could not read nor spell. 

But to radiate the heat of the affections into a 



158 THE AUTOCRAT 

clod, which absorbs all that is poured into it, but 
never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the 
pressure of hand or lip, — this is the great martyr- 
dom of sensitive beings, — most of all in that per- 
petual auto da fe where young womanhood is the 
sacrifice. 

You noticed, perhaps, what I just said 

about the loves and friendships of illiterate per- 
sons, — that is, of the human race, with a few ex- 
ceptions here and there. I like books, — I was 
born and bred among them, and have the easy 
feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable- 
boy has among horses. I don't think I undervalue 
them either as companions or as instructors. But 
I can't help remembering that the world's great 
men have not commonly been great scholars, nor 
its great scholars great men. The Hebrew pa- 
triarchs had small libraries, I think, if any ; yet 
they represent to our imaginations a very com- 
plete idea of manhood, and, I think, if we could 
ask in Abraham to dine with us men of letters 
next Saturday, we should feel honored by his 
company. 

What I wanted to say about books is this : that 
there are times in which every active mind feels 
itself above any and all human books. 

1 think a man must have a good opinion 

of himself, sir, — said the divinity-student, — who 
should feel himself above Shakespeare at any time. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 159 

My young friend, — I replied, — the man who 
is never conscious of a state of feeling or of intel- 
lectual effort entirely beyond expression by any 
form of words whatsoever is a mere creature of 
language. I can hardly believe there are any such 
men. Why, think for a moment of the power of 
music. The nerves that make us alive to it spread 
out (so the Professor tells me) in the most sensi- 
tive region of the marrow just where it is wid- 
ening to run upwards into the hemispheres. It 
has its seat in the region of sense rather than of 
thought. Yet it produces a continuous and, as it 
were, logical sequence of emotional and intellectual 
changes ; but how different from trains of thought 
proper ! how entirely beyond the reach of sym- 
bols ! — Think of human passions as compared with 
all phrases ! Did you ever hear of a man's grow- 
ing lean by the reading of " Romeo and Juliet,'* 
or blowing his brains out because Desdemona was 
maligned ? There are a good many symbols, even, 
that are more expressive than w^ords. I remem- 
ber a young wife who had to part with her husband 
for a time. She did not write a mournful poem ; 
indeed, she was a silent person, and perhaps hard- 
ly said a word about it ; but she quietly turned of 
a deep orange color with jaundice. A great many 
people in this world have but one form of rhetoric 
for their profoundest experiences, — namely, to 
waste away and die. When a man can read, his 



i6o THE AUTOCRAT 

paroxysm of feeling is passing. When he can 
read, his thought has slackened its hold. — You 
talk about reading Shakespeare, using him as an 
expression for the highest intellect, and you won- 
der that any common person should be so presump- 
tuous as to suppose his thought can rise above the 
text which lies before him. But think a moment. 
A child's reading of Shakespeare is one thing, and 
Coleridge's or Schlegel's reading of him is another. 
The saturation-point of each mind differs from that 
of every other. But I think it is as true for the 
small mind which can only take up a little as for 
the great one which takes up much, that the sug- 
gested trains of thought and feeling ought always 
to rise above — not the author, but the reader's 
mental version of the author, whoever he may be. 

I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes 
find themselves thrown into exalted mental condi- 
tions like those produced by music. Then they 
may drop the book, to pass at once into the region 
of thought without words. We may happen to 
be very dull folks, you and I, and probably are, 
unless there is some particular reason to suppose 
the contrary. But we get glimpses now and then 
of a sphere of spiritual possibilities, where we, dull 
as we are now, may sail in vast circles round the 
largest compass of earthly intelligences. 

I confess there are times when I feel like 

the friend I mentioned to you some time ago, — I 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. i6i 

hate the very sight of a book. Sometimes it 
becomes almost a physical necessity to talk out 
what is in the mind, before putting anything else 
into it. It is very bad to have thoughts and feel- 
ings, which were meant to come out in talk, strike 
in, as they say of some complaints that ought to 
show outwardly. 

I always believed in life rather than in books. 
I suppose every day of earth, with its hundred 
thousand deaths and something more of births, — 
with its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, 
its pangs and blisses, has more of humanity in it 
than all the books that were ever written, put 
together. I believe the flowers growing at this 
moment send up more fragrance to heaven than 
was ever exhaled from all the essences ever dis- 
tilled. 

Don't I read up various matters to talk 

about at this table or elsewhere ? — No, that is 
the last thing I would do. I will tell you my 
rule. Talk about those subjects you have had 
long in your mind, and listen to what others say 
about subjects you have studied but recently. 
Knowledge and timber should n't be much used 
till they are seasoned. 

Physiologists and metaphysicians have 

had their attention turned a good deal of late to 
the automatic and involuntary actions of the mind. 
Put an idea into your intelligence and leave it 
II 



1 62 THE AUTOCRAT 

there an hour, a day, a year, without ever having 
occasion to refer to it. When, at last, you return 
to it, you do not find it as it was when acquired. 
It has domiciliated itself, so to speak, — become 
at home, — entered into relations with your other 
thoughts, and integrated itself with the whole 
fabric of the mind. — Or take a simple and famil- 
iar example ; Dr. Carpenter has adduced it. You 
forget a name, in conversation, — go on talking, 
without making any effort to recall it, — and 
presently the mind evolves it by its own involun- 
tary and unconscious action, while you were pur- 
suing another train of thought, and the name 
rises of itself to your lips. 

There are some curious observations I should 
like to make about the mental machinery, but I 
think we are getting rather didactic. 

I should be gratified, if Benjamin Frank- 
lin would let me know something of his progress 
in the French language. I rather liked that ex- 
ercise he read us the other day, though I must 
confess I should hardly dare to translate it, for 
fear some people in a remote city where I once 
lived might think I was drawing their portraits. 

Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. 

I don't know whether the piece I mentioned from 
the French author was intended simply as Natu- 
ral History, or whether there was not a little 
malice in his description. At any rate, when I 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 163 

gave my translation to B. F. to turn back again 
into French, one reason was that I thought it 
would sound a little bald in English, and some 
people might think it was meant to have some 
local bearing or other, — which the author, of 
course, did n't mean, inasmuch as he could not be 
acquainted with anything on this side of the 
water. 

[The above remarks were addressed to the 
schoolmistress, to whom I handed the paper after 
looking it over. The divinity-student came and 
read over her shoulder, — very curious, apparently, 
but his eyes wandered, I thought. Fancying that 
her breathing was somewhat hurried and high, or 
thoracic, as my friend, the Professor, calls it, I 
watched her a little more closely. — It is none of 
my business. — After all, it is the imponderables 
that move the world, — heat, electricity, love. — 
Habet f] 

This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made 
into boarding-school French, such as you see here ; 
don't expect too much ; — the mistakes give a 
relish to it, I think. 

Les Societes Polyphtsiophilosophiques. 

Ces Soci^t^s la sent une Institution pour suppleer 
aux besoins d*esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui 
ont surv^cu a leurs Amotions a I'egard du beau sexe, 
et qui n'ont pas la distraction de I'habitude de boire. 

Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Soci^t^s, on 



1.64 THE AUTOCRAT 

doit avoir le moins de cheveux possible. S'il y en 
reste plusieurs qui resistant anx ddpilatoires natu- 
relles et autres, on doit avoir quelques connaissances, 
n'importe dans quel genre. Des le moment qu'on 
ouvre la porte de la Society, on a un grand intdret 
dans toutes les choses dont on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un 
microscopiste demontre un nouveau flexor du tarse 
d'un melolontha vulgaris. Douze savans improvises, 
portans des besides, et qui ne connaissent rien des 
insectes, si ce n'est les morsures du culex^ se pr^- 
cipitent sur I'instrument, et voient — une grande 
bulle d'air, dont ils s'emerv.eillent avec effusion. Ce 
qui est un spectacle plein d' instruction — pour ceux 
qui ne sont pas de ladite Soci^t^. Tons les membres 
regardent les chimistes en particulier avec un air 
d'intelligence parfaite pendant qu'ils prouvent dans 
un discours d'une demiheure que 0^ N^ H^ C^, etc., 
font quelque chose qui n'est bonne a rien, mais qui 
probablement a une odeur tres d^sagreable, selon 
riiabitude des produits chimiques. Apres cela vient 
un math^maticien qui vous bourre avec des a-\-b Qt 
vous rapporte enfin un x -\- y^ dont vous n'avez pas 
besoin et qui ne change nullement vos relations avec 
la vie. Un naturaliste vous parle des formations 
spdciales des animaux excessivement inconnus, dont 
vous n'avez jamais soup9onne I'existence. Ainsi il 
vous d^crit les follicules de V appendix vermiformis 
d'un dzigguetai. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est 
qu'un folUcule. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est 
qu'un appendix vermiformis. Vous n'avez jamais 
entendu parler du dzigguetai, Ainsi vous gagnez 
toutes ces connaissances a la fois, qui s'attachent a 
votre esprit corame I'eau adhere aux plumes d'un 
canard. On connait toutes les langues ex officio en 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 165 

devenant membre d'une de ces Soci^t^s. Ainsi 
quand on entend lire un Essai sur les dialectes, 
Tchntchiens, on comprend tout cela de suite, et s'in- 
struit ^normement. 

II y a deux esp^ces d'individus qu'on trouve tou- 
jours aces Soci^tes: 1° Le membre a questions; 2° 
Le membre a '' Bylaws." 

Im question est une sp^cialit^. Celui qui en fait 
metier ne fait jamais des reponses. La question est 
tme maniere tres commode de dire les choses sui- 
vantes: " Me voila! Je ne suis pas fossil, moi, — je 
respire encore! J'ai des idees, — vo^-ez mon intelli- 
gence! Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je 
savais quelque chose de cela! Ah, nous avons un 
pen de sagacite, voyez vous ! Nous ne sommes nul- 
lement la bete qu'on pense! " — Lefaiseur de ques- 
tions donne peu d" attention aux reponses qu'on fait ; ce 
n' est pas la da?is sa specialite. 

Le membre a " Bylaws" est le bouchon de toutes 
les Amotions mousseuses et gen^reuses qui se montrent 
dans la Society. C'est un empereur manque, ^un 
tyran a la troisieme trituration. C'est un esprit dur, 
born^, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans les 
grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne 
Taime pas dans la Societe, mais on le respecte et on 
le craint. II n'y a qu'un mot pour ce membre au- 
dessus de " Bylaws." Ce mot est pour lui ce que 
rOm est aux Hindous. C'est sa religion; il n'y a 
rien audela. Ce mot la c'est la Constitution ! 

Lesdites Soci^tes publient des feuilletons de tems 
en tems. On Jes trouve abandonnes a sa porte, nus 
comme des enfans nouveaunes, faute de membrane 
cutanee, ou meme papyrac^e. * Si on aime le bota- 
uique, on y trouve une memoire sur les coquilles; si 



i66 TEE AUTOCRAT 

on fait des "Etudes zoologiques, on trouve un grand 
tas de q'^ — 1, ce qui doit etre infiniment plus com- 
mode que les encyclop^dies. Ainsi il est clair comme 
la m(^.taphysique qu'on doit devenir membre d'une 
Societe telle que nous ddcrivons. 

Becette pour le Depilatoir-e Physiophilosophique. 

Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj. 

Depilez avec. Poiissez ensuite. 

I told the boy that his translation into 

French was creditable to him ; and some of the 
company wishing to hear what there was in the 
piece that made me smile, I turned it into English 
for them, as well as I could, on the spot. 

The landlady's daughter seemed to be much 
amused by the idea that a depilatory could take 
the place of literary and scientific accomplish- 
ments ; she wanted me to print the piece, so that 
she might send a copy of it to her cousin in Miz- 
zourah ; she did n't think he 'd have to do anything 
to the outside of his head to get into any of the 
societies; he had to wear a wig once, when he 
played a part in a tabullo. 

No, — said I, — I shouldn't think of printing 
that in English. I '11 tell you why. As soon as 
you get a few thousand people together in a town, 
there is somebody that every sharp thing you say 
is sure to hit. What if a thing was written in 
Paris or in Pekin ? — that makes no difference. 
Everybody in those cities, or almost everybody, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 167 

has his counterpart here, and in all large places. — 
You never studied averages as I have had occasion 
to. 

I '11 tell you how I came to know so much 
about averages. There was one season when I 
was lecturing, commonly, five evenings in the 
week, through most of the lecturing period. I 
soon found, as most speakers do, that it was 
pleasanter to work one lecture than to keep sev- 
eral in hand. 

Don't you get sick to Jeath of one lecture ? 

— said the landlady's daughter, — who had a new 
dress on that day, and was in spirits for conver- 
sation. 

I was going to talk about averages, — I said, — 
but I have no objection to telling you about lec- 
tures, to begin with. 

A new lecture always has a certain excitement 
connected with its delivery. One thinks well of 
it, as of most things fresh from his mind. After 
a few deliveries of it, one gets tired and then dis- 
gusted with its repetition. Go on delivering it, 
and the disgust passes off, until, after one has re- 
peated it a iMndred or a hundred and fifty times, 
he rather enjoys the hundred and first or hundred 
and fifty-first time, before a new audience. But 
this is on one condition, — that he never lays the 
lecture down and lets it cool. If he does, there 
comes on a loathing for it which is intense, so 



1 68 THE AUTOCRAT 

that the sight of the old battered manuscript is 
as bad as sea-sickness. 

A new lecture is just like any other new tool. 
"We use it for a while with pleasure. Then it 
blisters our hands, and we hate to touch it. By 
and by our hands get callous, and then we have 
no longer any sensitiveness about it. But if we 
give it up, the calluses disappear ; and if we med- 
dle with it again, we miss the novelty and get the 
blisters. — The story is often quoted of Whitefield, 
that he said a sermon was good for nothing until 
it had been preached forty times. A lecture 
does n^t begin to be old until it has passed its hun- 
dredth delivery ; and some, I think, have doubled, 
if not quadrupled, that number. These old lec- 
tures are a man's best, commonly ; they improve 
by age, also, — like the pipes, fiddles, and poems I 
told you of the other day. One learns to make 
the most of their strong points and to carry oiF 
their weak ones, — to take out the really good 
things which don't tell on the audience, and put 
in cheaper things that do. All this degrades him, 
of course, but it improves the lecture for general 
delivery. A thoroughly popular lecture ought to 
have nothing in it which five hundred people can- 
not all take in a flash, just as it is uttered. 

No, indeed, — I should be very sorry to 

say anything disrespectful of audiences. I have 
been kindly treated by a great many, and may oc- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. i^c) 

caiionally face one hereafter. But I tell you the 
average intellect of five hundred persons, taken as 
they come, is not very high. It may be sound 
and safe, so far as it goes, but it is not very rapid 
or profound. A lecture ought to be something 
which all can understand, about something which 
interests everybody. I think, that, if any experi- 
enced lecturer gives you a different account from 
this, it will probably be one of those eloquent or 
forcible speakers who hold an audience by the 
charm of their manner, whatever they talk about, 
— even when they don't talk very well. 

But an average^ which was Avhat I meant to 
speak about, is one of the most extraordinary 
subjects of observation and study. It is awful in 
its uniformity, in its automatic necessity of action. 
Two communities of ants or bees are exactly alike 
in all their actions, so far as we can see. Two 
lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each, are so 
nearly alike, that they are absolutely undistin- 
guishable in many cases by any definite mark, 
and there is nothing but the place and time by 
which one can tell the '^remarkably intelligent 
audience '' of a town in New York or Ohio from 
one in any New England town of similar size. 
Of course, if any principle of selection has come 
in, as in those special associations of young men 
which are common in cities, it deranges the uni- 
formity of the assemblage. But let there be no 



lyo THE AUTOCRAT 

such interfering circumstances, and one knows 
pretty well even the look the audience will have, 
before he goes. Front seats : a few old folks, — 
shiny-headed, — slant up best ear towards the 
speaker, — drop off asleep after a while, when the 
air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic 
acid. Bright women's faces, young and middle- 
aged, a little behind these, but toward the front — 
(pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that.) 
Here and there a countenance, sharp and scholar- 
like, and a dozen pretty female ones sprinkled 
about. An indefinite number of pairs of young 
people, — happy, but not always very attentive. 
Boys, in the background, more or less quiet. Dull 
faces here, there, — in how many places ! I don't 
say dull people, but faces without a ray of sympa- 
thy or a movement of expression. They are what 
kill the lecturer. These negative faces with their 
vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and suck 
^he warm soul out of him ; — that is the chief 
reason why lecturers grow so pale before the sea- 
son is over. They render latent any amount of 
vital caloric ; they act on our minds as those 
cold-blooded creatures I was talking about act on 
our hearts. 

Out of all these inevitable elements the audience 
is generated, — a great compound vertebrate, as 
much like fifty others you have seen as any two 
mammals of the same species are like each other. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 171 

Each audience laughs, and each cries, in just the 
same places of your lecture ; that is, if you make 
one laugh or cry, you make all. Even those little 
indescribable movements Avhich a lecturer takes 
cognizance of, just as a driver notices his horse's 
cocking his ears, are sure to come in exactly the 
same place of your lecture always. I declare to 
you, that, as the monk said about the picture in 
the convent, — that he sometimes thought the liv- 
ing tenants were the shadows, and the painted 
figures the realities, — I have sometimes felt as if 
I were a wandering spirit, and this great unchang- 
ing multivertebrate which I faced night after night 
was one ever-listening animal, which ^^Tithed along 
after me wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet 
every evening, turning up to me the same sleep- 
less eyes which I thought I had closed with my 
last drowsy incantation ! 

O yes ! A thousand kindly and courte- 
ous acts, — a thousand faces that melted individ- 
ually out of my recollection as the April snow 
melts, but only to steal away and find the beds 
of flowers whose roots are memory, but which 
blossom in poetry and dreams. I am not un- 
grateful, nor unconscious of all the good feeling 
and intelligence everywhere to be met with through 
the vast parish to which the lecturer ministers. 
But when I set forth, leading a string of my 
mind's daughters to market, as the country-folk 



172 THE AUTOCRAT 

fetch in their strings of horses — Pardon me, that 
wa^ a coarse fellow who sneered at the sympathy- 
wasted on an unhappy lecturer, as if, because he 
was decently paid for his services, he had there- 
fore sold his sensibilities. — Family men get dread- 
fully homesick. In the remote and bleak village 
the heart returns to the red blaze of the logs in 
one's fireplace at home. 

"There are his young barbarians all at play," — 

if he owns any youthful savages. — No, the world 
has a million roosts for a man, but only one nest. 

It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which 

an appeal is always made in all discussions. The 
men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with 
that slight tension about the nostrils which the 
consciousness of carrying a " settler '* in the form 
of a fact or a revolver gives the individual thus 
armed. When a person is really full of informa- 
tion, and does not abuse it to crush conversation, 
his part is to that of the real talkers what the in- 
strumental accompaniment is in a trio or quartette 
of vocalists. 

What do I mean by the real talkers ? — 

Why, the people with fresh ideas, of course, and 
plenty of good Avarm words to dress them in. 
Facts always yield the place of honor, in conver- 
sation, to thoughts about facts ; but if a false note 
is uttered, down comes the finger on the key and 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



173 



the man of facts asserts his true dignity. I have 
known three of these men of facts, at least, who 
were always formidable, — and one of them was 
tyrannical. 

Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand ap- 
pearance on a particular occasion ; but these men 
knew something about almost everything, and 
never made mistakes. — He ? Veneers in first-rate 
style. The mahogany scales off now and then in 
spots, and then you see the cheap. light stuff. — I 

found very fine in conversational information, 

the other day when we were in company. The 
talk ran upon -mountains. He was wonderfully 
well acquainted with the leading facts about the 
Andes, the Apennines, and the Appalachians; 
he had nothing in particular to say about Ara- 
rat, Ben Nevis, and various other mountains that 
were mentioned. By and by some Kevolutionary 
anecdote came up, and he showed singular famil- 
iarity w4th the lives of the Adamses, and gave 
many details relating to Major Andre. A point 
of Natural History being suggested, he gave an 
excellent account of the air-bladder of fishes. He 
was very full upon the subject of agriculture, but 
retired from the conversation when horticulture 
was introduced in the discussion. So he seemed 
well acquainted with the geology of anthracite, 
but did not pretend to know anything of other 
kinds of coal. There was something so odd about 



174 '^HE AUTOCRAT 

the extent and limitations of his knowledge, that 
I suspected all at once what might be the meaning 
of it, and waited till I got an opportunity. — Have 
you seen the " New American Cyclopedia 1 " said 
I. — I have, he replied ; I received an early copy. 
— How far does it go ? — He turned red, and an- 
swered, — To Araguay. — O, said I to myself, — 
not quite so far as Ararat ; — that is the reason he 
knew nothing about it ; but he must have read all 
the rest straight through, and, if he can remember 
what is in this volume until he has read all those 
that are to come, he will know more than I ever 
thought he would. 

Since I had this experience, I hear that some- 
body else has related a similar story. I did n't 
borrow it, for all that. — I made a comparison at 
table some time since, which has often been quoted 
and received many compliments. It was that of 
the mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye ; the 
more light you pour on it, the more it contracts. 
The simile is a very obvious, and, I suppose I 
may now say, a happy one ; for it has just been 
shown me that it occurs in a Preface to certain 
Political Poems of Thomas Moore's published long 
before my remark was repeated. When a person 
of fair character for literary honesty uses an image 
such as another has employod before him, the pre- 
sumption is, that he has struck upon it indepen- 
dently, or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it 
his own. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 175 

It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, 
whether a comparison which suddenly suggests it- 
self is a new conception or a recollection. I told 
you the other day that I never Avrote a line of verse 
that seemed to me comparatively good, but it ap- 
peared old at once, and often as if it had been 
borrowed. But I confess I never suspected the 
above comparison of being old, except from the 
fact of its obviousness. It is proper, howe^-^r, that 
I proceed by a formal instrument to relinquish all 
claim to any property in an idea given to the world 
at about the time when I had just joined the class 
in which Master Thomas Moore was then a some- 
what advanced scholar. 

I, therefore, in full possession of my native hon- 
esty, but knowing the liability of all men to be 
elected to public office, and for that reason feeling 
uncertain how soon I mav be in danc^er of losing 
it, do hereby renounce all claim to being consid- 
ered the first person who gave utterance to a cer- 
tain simile or comparison referred to in the accom- 
panying documents, and relating to the pupil of 
the eye on the one part and the mind of the bigot 
on the other. I hereby relinquish all glory and 
profit, and especially all claims to letters from au- 
tograph collectors founded upon my supposed prop- 
erty in the above comparison, — knowing well, 
that, according to the laws of literature, they who 
speak first hold the fee of the thing said. I do( 



176 THE AUTOCRAT 

also agree that all Editors of Cyclopaedias and 
Biographical Dictionaries, all Publishers of Re- 
views and Papers, and all Critics writing therein, 
shall be at liberty to retract or qualify any opin- 
ion predicated on the supposition that I was the 
sole and undisputed author of the above compari- 
son. But, inasmuch as I do affirm that the com- 
parison aforesaid was uttered by me in the firm 
belief that it was new and wholly my own, and 
as I have good reason to think that I had never 
seen or heard it when first expressed by me, and 
as it is well known that different persons may in- 
dependently utter the same idea, — as is evinced 
by that familiar line from Donatus, 

" Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt," — 

now, therefore, I do request by this instrument 
that all well-disposed persons will abstain from as- 
serting or implying that I am open to any accu- 
sation whatsoever touching the said comparison, 
and, if they have so asserted or implied, that they 
will have the manliness forthwith to retract the 
same assertion or insinuation. 

I think few persons have a greater disgust for 
plagiarism than myself. If I had even suspected 
that the idea in question was borrowed, I should 
have disclaimed originality, or mentioned the coin- 
cidence, as I once did in a case where I had hap- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 177 

pened to hit on an idea of Swift's. — But what 
shall I do about these verses I was going to read 
Tou ^ I am afraid that half mankind would ac- 
cuse me of stealing their thoughts, if I printed 
them. I am convinced that several of you, espe- 
cially if you are getting a little on in life, will rec- 
ognize some of these sentiments as having passed 
through your consciousness at some time. I can't 
help it, — it is too late now. The verses are writ- 
ten, and you must have them. Listen, then, and 
you shall hear 

WHAT WE ALL THINK. 

That age was older once than now, 

In spite of locks untimely shed, 
Or silvered on the youthful brow 5 

That babes make love and children wed. 

That sunshine had a heavenly glow, 

Which faded with those " good old days," 

When winters came with deeper snow, 
And autumns with a softer haze. 

That — mother, sister, wife, or child — 
The " best of women " each has known. 

Were school -boys ever half so wild ? 
How young the grandpapas have grown. 

That hut for this our souls were free. 
And but for that our lives were blest 5 

That in some season yet to be 
Our cares will leave us time to rest. 

Whene'er we groan with ache or pain, 
Some common ailment of the race, — 

12 



1 78 THE AUTOCRAT 

Though doctors think the matter plain, — 
That ours is " a peculiar case." 

That when like babes with fingers burned 
We count one bitter maxim more, 

Our lesson all the world has learned, 
And men are wiser than before. 

That when we sob o'er fancied woes, 
The angels hovering overhead 

Count every pitying drop that flows, 
And love us for the tears we shed. 

That when we stand with tearless eye 
And turn the beggar from our door, 

They still approve us when we sigh, 
"Ah, had I but one thousand more ! " 

That weakness smoothed the path of sin. 
In half the slips our youth has known ; 

And whatsoe'er its blame has been, 
That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown. 

Though temples crowd the crumbled brink 
O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, 

Their tablets bold with what we think, 
Their echoes dumb to what we know ; 

That one unquestioned text we read, 
All doubt beyond, all fear above, 

Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed 
Can burn or blot it ; God is Love ! 



GF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 179 




VII. 

HIS particular record is noteworthy 
principally for containing a paper by 
my friend, the Professor, with a poem 
.or two annexed or intercalated. I 
would suggest to 3'oung persons that they should 
pass over it for the present, and read, instead of 
it, that story about the young man who was in 
love with the young lady, and in great trouble for 
something like nine pages, but happily married on 
the tenth page or thereabouts, which, I take it for 
granted, will be contained in the periodical where 
this is found, unless it ditfer from all other publi- 
cations of the kind. Perhaps, if such young peo- 
ple will lay the number aside, and take it up ten 
years, or a little more, from the present time, they 
may find somethino: in it for their advantao:e. 
They can't possibly understand it all now.] 

My friend, the Professor, began talking with me 
one day in a dreary sort of way, I could n't get 
at the difficulty for a good while, but at last it 
turned out that somebody had been calhng him an 
old man. — He did n't mind his students calling 
him the old man, he said. That was a technical 



i8o THE AUTOCRAT 

expression, and he thought that he remembered 
hearing it applied to himself when he was about 
twenty-five. It may be considered as a familiar 
and sometimes endearing appellation. An Irish- 
woman calls her husband '' the old man/' and he 
returns the caressing expression by speaking of 
her as "the old woman." But now, said he, just 
suppose a case like one of these. A young stran- 
ger is overheard talking of you as a very nice old 
gentleman. A friendly and genial critic speaks 
of your green old age as illustrating the truth of 
some axiom you had uttered with reference to that 
period of life. What / call an old man is a per- 
son with a smooth, shining crown and a fringe of 
scattered white hairs, seen in the streets on sun- 
shiny days, stooping as he walks, bearing a cane, 
moving cautiously and slowly ; telling old stories, 
smiling at present follies, living in a narrow world 
of dry habits ; one that remains waking when 
others have dropped asleep, and keeps a little 
night-lamp-flame of life burning year after year, 
if the lamp is not upset, and there is only a care- 
ful hand held round it to prevent the puffs of 
wind from blowing the flame out. That 's what I 
call an old man. 

Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to" 
tell me that I have got to that yet ? Why, bless 
you, I am several years short of the time when — 
[I knew what was coming, and could hardly keep 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



i8i 



from laughing ; twenty years ago he used to quote 
it as one of those absurd speeches men of genius 
will make, and now he is going to argue from it] 

— several years short of the time when Balzac says 
that men are — most — you know — dangerous to 

— the hearts of — in short, most to be dreaded by 
duennas that have charge of susceptible females. 

— What age is that 1 said I, statistically. -^ Fifty- 
two years, answered the Professor. — Balzac ought 
to know, said I, if it is true that Goethe said of him, 
that each of his stories must have been dug out of 
a woman's heart. But fifty-two is a high figure. 

^tand in the light of the window. Professor, 
said I. — The Professor took up the desired posi- 
tion. — You have white hairs, I said. — Had 'em 
any time these twenty years, said the Professor. — 
And the crow's-foot, — pes anserinus, rather. — The 
Professor smiled, as I wanted him to, and the folds 
radiated like the ridges of a half-opened fan, from 
the outer corner of the eyes to the temples. — And 
the calipers, said I. — What are the calipers ? he 
asked, curiously. — Why, the parenthesis, said I. 
Parenthesis ? said the Professor ; what 's that ? — 
Why, look in the glass when you are disposed to 
laugh, and see if your mouth is n't framed in a 
couple of crescent lines, — so, my boy { ) — It 's 
all nonsense, said the Professor ; just look at my 
biceps ; — and he began pulling off his coat to show 
me his arm. Be careful, said I ; you can't bear 



i82 THE AUTOCRAT 

exposure to the air, at your time of life, as you 
could once. — I will box with you, said the Pro- 
fessor, row with you, walk with you, ride with 
you, swim with you, or sit at table with you, for 
fifty dollars a side. — Pluck survives stamina, I 
answered. 

The Professor went off a little out of humor. 
A few weeks afterwards he came in, looking very 
good-natured, and brought me a paper, which I 
have here, and from which I shall read you some 
portions, if you don't object. He had been think- 
ing the matter over, he said, — had read Cicero 
^' De Senectute," and made up his mind to me»t 
old age half way. These were some of his reflec- 
tions that he had written down ; so here you have 

THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER. 

There is no doubt when old age begins. The 
human body is a furnace which keeps in blast 
threescore years and ten, more or less. It burns 
about three hundred pounds of carbon a year, (be- 
sides other fuel,) when in fair working order, ac- 
cording to a great chemist's estimate. When the 
fire slackens, life declines ; when it goes out, we 
are dead. 

It has been shown by some noted French exper- 
imenters, that the amount of combustion increases 
up to about the thirtieth year, remains stationary 
to about forty-five, and then diminishes. This 



OF THE BREAKFAST'TABLE. 183 

last is the point where old age starts from. The 
great fiict of physical life is the perpetual com- 
merce with the elements, and the fire is the meas- 
ure of it. 

About this time of life, if food is plenty where 
you live, — for that, you know, regulates matri- 
mony, — you may be expecting to find yourself a 
grandfather some fine morning ; a kind of domestic 
felicity that gives one a cool shiver of delight to 
think of, as among the not remotely possible events. 

I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. 
Johnson wrote to Thrale, telling her about life's 
declining from thirty-Jive ; the furnace is in full blast 
for ten years longer, as I have said. The Romans 
came very near the mark ; their age of enlistment 
reached from seventeen to forty-six years. 

What is the use of fighting against the seasons, 
or the tides, or the movements of the planetary 
bodies, or this ebb in the wave of life that flows 
through us 1 AVe are old fellows from the mo- 
ment the fire begins to go out. Let us always be- 
have like gentlemen when we are introduced to 
new acquaintance. 

Incipit Allegoria Senectutis. 

Old Age, this is Mr. Professor ; Mr. Professor, 
this is Old Age. 

Old Age. — Mr. Professor, I hope to see you 
well. I have known you for some time, though 



1 84 THE AUTOCRAT 

I thmk you did not know me. Shall we walk 
down the street together 1 

Professor (drawing back a little). — We can 
talk more quietly perhaps in my study. Will 
you tell me how it is you seem to be acquainted 
with everybody you are introduced to, though he 
evidently considers you an entire stranger ? 

Old Age. — I make it a rule never to force 
myself upon a person's recognition until I have 
known him at least Jive years. 

Professor. — Do you mean to say that you have 
known me so long as that ? 

Old Age. — I do. I left my card on you longer 
ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it ; 
yet I see you have it with you. 

Professor. — Where ? 

Old Age. — There between your eyebrows, — 
three straight lines running up and down ; all the 
probate courts know that token, — " Old Age, his 
mark." Put your forefinger on the inner end of 
one eyebrow, and your middle finger on the inner 
end of the other eyebrow ; now separate the fin- 
gers, and you will smooth out my sign-manual ; 
that 's the way you used to look before I left my 
card on you. 

Professor. — What message do people generally 
send back when you first call on them ? 

Old Age. — Not at home. Then I leave a card 
and go. Next year I call ; get the same answer ; 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 185 

leave another card. So for five or six, — some- 
times ten years or more. At last, if they don't 
let me in, I break in through the front door or 
the windows. 

We talked together in this way some time. 
Then Old Age said again, — Come, let us walk 
down the street together, — and offered me a cane, 
an eye-glass, a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes. — 
No, much obliged to you, said I. I don't want 
those things, and I had a little rather talk with 
you here, privately, in my study. So I dressed 
myself up in a jaunty way and walked out alone ; 
— got a fall, caught a cold, was laid up with a 
lumbago, and had time to think over this whole 
matter. ^ 

Explicit Allegoria Senectutis. 

We have settled when old age begins. Like all 
Nature's processes, it is gentle and gradual in its 
approaches, strewed with allusions, and all its lit- 
tle griefs soothed by natural sedatives. But the 
iron hand is not less irresistible because it wears 
the velvet glove. The button wood throws off its 
bark in large flakes, which one may find lying at 
its foot, pushed out, and at last pushed off, by that 
tranquil movement from beneath, which is too 
slow to be seen, but too powerful to be arrested. 
One finds them always, but one rarely sees them 
fall. So it is our youth drops from us, — scales 
off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the tender 



i86 THE AUTOCRAT 

and immature fresh growth of old age. Looked 
at collectively, the changes of old age appear as a 
series of personal insults and indignities, termi- 
nating at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne 
has called " the very disgrace and ignominy of our 
natures/^ 

My lady's cheek can boast no more 
The cranberry white and pink it wore ; 
And where her shining locks divide, 
The parting line is all too wide 

No, no, — this will never do. Talk ahout men, if 
you will, but spare the poor women. 

We have a brief description of seven stages of 
life by a remarkably good observer. It is very 
presumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have 
been struck with the fact that life admits of a nat- 
ural analysis into no less than fifteen distinct pe- 
riods. Taking the five primary divisions, infancy, 
childhood, youth, manhood, old age, each of these 
has its own three periods of immaturity, complete 
development, and decline. I recognize an old baby 
at once, — with its ^' pipe and mug," (a stick of 
candy and a porringer,) — so does everybody; 
and an old child shedding its milk-teeth is only a 
little prototype of the old man shedding his per- 
manent ones. Fifty or thereabouts is only the 
childhood, as it were, of old age ; the graybeard 
youngster must be weaned from his late suppers 
now. So you will see that you have to make fif- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 187 

teen stages at any rate, and that it would not be 
hard to make twenty-five ; five primary, each with 
five secondary divisions. 

The infoncy and childhood 'of commencing old 
age have the same ingenuous simplicity and de- 
lightful unconsciousness about them as the first 
stage of the earlier periods of life shows. The 
great delusion of mankind is in supposing that to 
be individual and exceptional which is universal 
and according to law. A person is always star- 
tled when he hears himself seriously called an old 
man for the first time. 

Kature gets us out of youth into manhood, as 
sailors are hurried on board of vessels, — in a state 
of intoxication. We are hustled into maturity 
reeling with our passions and imaginations, and 
we have drifted far away from port before we 
awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out 
of maturity into old age, without our knowing 
where Ave are going, she drugs us with strong opi- 
ates, and so we stagger along with wide-open eyes 
that see nothing until snwv enough has fallen on 
our heads to rouse our comatose brains out of their 
stupid trances. 

There is one mark of age that strikes me more 
than any of the physical ones ; — I mean the for- 
mation of Habits. An old man who shrinks into 
himself falls into ways that become as positive and 
as much beyond the reach of outside influences as 



1 88 THE AUTOCRAT 

if they were governed by clock-work. The animal 
functions, as the physiologists call them, in distinc- 
tion from the organic^ tend, in the process of deteri- 
oration to which age and neglect united gradually 
lead them, to assume the periodical or rhythmical 
type of movement. Every man^s heart (this organ 
belongs, you know, to the organic system) has a 
regular mode of action ; but I know a great many 
men whose brains, and all their voluntary exist- 
ence flowing from their brains, have a st/stole and 
diastole as regular as that of the heart itself. Habit 
is the approximation of the animal system to the 
organic. It is a confession of failure in the high- 
est function of being, which involves a perpetual 
self-determination, in full view of all existing cir- 
cumstances. But habit, you see, is an action in 
present circumstances from past motives. It is 
substituting a vis a tergo for the evolution of living 
force. 

When a man, instead of burning up three hun- 
dred pounds of carbon a year, has got down to 
two hundred and fifty, it is plain enough he must 
economize force somewhere. Now habit is a la- 
Dor-saving invention which enables a man to get 
along with less fuel, — that is all ; for fuel is force, 
you know, just as much in the page I am writing 
for you as in the locomotive or the legs that carry 
it to you. Carbon is the same thing, whether you 
call it wood, or coal, or bread and cheese. A rev- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 189 

erend gentleman demurred to this statement, — as 
if, because combustion is asserted to be the sine 
qua non of thought, therefore thought is alleged to 
be a purely chemical process. Facts of chemistry 
are one thing, I told him, and facts of conscious- 
ness another. It can be proved to him, by a very 
simple analysis of some of his spare elements, that 
every Sunday, when he does his duty faithfully, 
he uses up more phosphorus out of his brain and 
nerves than on ordinary days. But then he had 
his choice whether to do his duty, or to neglect it, 
and save his phosphorus and other combustibles. 

It follows from all this that the formation of hab- 
its ought naturally to be, as it is, the special char- 
acteristic of age. As for the muscular powers, 
they pass their maximum long before the time 
when the true decline of life begins, if we may 
judge by the experience of the ring. A man is 
" stale,^* I think, in their language, soon after 
thirty, — often, no doubt, much earlier, as gen- 
tlemen of the pugilistic profession are exceed- 
ingly apt to keep their vital fire burning with the 
blower up. 

So far without Tully. But in the mean 

time I have been reading the treatise, " De Senec- 
tute."' It is not long, but a leisurely performance. 
The old gentleman was sixty-three years of age 
when he addressed it to his friend T. Pomponius 
. Atticus, Eq., a person of distinction, some two or 



I90 THE AUTOCRAT 

three years older. We read it when we are school- 
boys, forget all about it for thirty years, and then 
take it up again by a natural instinct, — provided 
always that we read Latin as we drink water, 
without stopping to taste it, as all of us who ever 
learned it at school or college ought to do. 

Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A 
good deal of it is what would be called in vulgar 
phrase " slow.'' It unpacks and unfolds incident- 
al illustrations which a modern writer would look 
at the back of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole. 
I think ancient classics and ancient people are 
alike in the tendency to this kind of expansion. 

An old doctor came to me once (this is literal 
fact) with some contrivance or other for people 
with broken kneepans. As the patient would be 
confined for a good w^hile, he might find it dull 
work to sit with his hands in his lap. Reading, 
the ingenious inventor suggested, would be an 
agreeable mode of passing the time. He men- 
tioned, in his written account of his contrivance, 
various works that might amuse the weary hour. 
I remember only three, — Don Quixote, Tom 
Jones, and Watts on the Mind. 

It is not generally understood that Cicero's 
essay was delivered as a lyceum lecture (concio 
popularis), at the Temple of Mercury. The jour- 
nals (papyri) of the day (" Tempora Quotidiana," 
— " Tribunus Quirinalis," — **Praeco Komanus,'' 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 191 

and the rest) gave abstracts of it, one of which I 
have translated and modernized, as being a sub- 
stitute for the analysis I intended to make. 

IV. Kal. Mart 

The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last 
evening, was well attended by the elite of our 
frreat citv. Two hundred thousand sestertia were 
thought to have been represented in the house. 
The doors were besieged by a mob of shabby fel- 
lows (illotum vitlgus), who were at length quieted 
after two or three had been somewhat roughly 
handled (gladlo jugulati). The speaker was the 
well-known Mark Tully, Eq., — the subject Old 
Age. Mr. T. has a lean and scraggy person, with 
a very unpleasant excrescence upon his nasal 
feature, from which his nickname of chick-pea 
(Cicero) is said by some to be derived. As a 
lecturer is public property, we may remark, that 
his outer garment itoga) was of cheap stuff and 
somewhat worn, and that his general style and 
appearance of dress and manner (habitus, vestitus- 
gue) were somewhat provincial. 

The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue 
between Cato and Loelius. We found the first 
portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments 
for refreshment (pocula qucedam vini). — All want 
to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when 
they get it ; therefore they are donkeys. — The 
lecturer will allow us to say that he is the donkey ; 



192 THE AUTOCRAT 

we know we shall grumble at old age, but we 
want to live through youth and manhood, in spite 
of the troubles we shall groan over. — There was 
considerable prosing as to what old age can do 
and can't. — True, but not new. Certainly, old 
folks can't jump, — break the necks of their thigh- 
bones (femorum cervices) if they do; can't crack 
nuts with their teeth ; can't climb a greased pole 
(malum inunctum scandere non possunt) ; but they 
can tell old stories and give you good advice ; if 
they know what you have made up your mind to 
do when you ask them. — All this is well enough, 
but won't set the Tiber on fire [Tibetim accendere 
nequaquam potest). 

There were some clever things enough (dicta 
hand inepta), a few of which are worth reporting. 

— Old people are accused of being forgetful ; 
but they never forget where they have put their 
money. — Nobody is so old he does n't think he 
can live a year. — The lecturer quoted an ancient 
maxim, — Grow old early, if you would be old 
long, — but disputed it. — Authority, he thought, 
was the chief privilege of age. — It is not great to 
have money, but fine to govern those that have it. 

— Old age begins at forty-six years, according to 
the common opinion. — It is not every kind of 
old age or of wine that grows sour with time. — 
Some excellent remarks were made on immortal- 
ity, but mainly borrowed from and credited to 



OF THE BREAKFAST'TABLE. 193 

Plato. — Several pleasing anecdotes were told. — 
Old Milo, champion of the heavy weights in his 
day, looked at his arms and whimpered, '' They 
are dead." Not so dead as you, you old fool, — 
says Cato ; — you never were good for anything 
but for your shoulders and flanks. — Pisistratus 
asked Solon what made him dare to be so obsti- 
nate. Old age, said Solon. 

The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and a 
credit to our culture and civilization. — The re- 
porter goes on to state that there will be no lec- 
ture next week, on account of the expected com- 
bat between the bear and the barbarian. Betting 
(sponsio) two to one {diio ad unum) on the bear. 

After all, the most encouraging things I 

find in the treatise, "De Senectute," are the 
stories of men who have found new occupations 
when growing old, or kept up their common pur- 
suits in the extreme period of life. Cato learned 
Greek when he was old, and speaks of wishing to 
learn the fiddle, or some such instrument {Jidi- 
bus), after the example of Socrates. Solon learned 
something new, every day, in his old age, as he 
gloried to proclaim. Cyrus pointed out with 
pride and pleasure the trees he had planted with 
his own hand. [I remember a pillar on the Duke 
of Northumberland's estate at Alnwick, with an 
inscription in similar words, if not the same. 



194 THE AUTOCRAT 

That, like other country pleasures, never wears 
out. None is too rich, none too poor, none too 
young, none too old to enjoy it.] There is a New- 
England story I have heard more to the point, 
however, than any of Cicero^s. A young farmer 
was urged to set out some apple-trees. — No, said 
he, they are too long growing, and I don^t want 
to plant for other people. The young farmer's 
father was spoke;n to about it, but he, with better 
reason, alleged that apple-trees were slow and life 
was fleeting. At last some one mentioned it to 
the old grandfather of the young farmer. He had 
nothing else to do, — so he stuck in some trees. 
He lived long enough to drink barrels of cider 
made from the apples that grew on those trees. 

As for myself, after visiting a friend lately, — 
[Do remember all the time that this is the Profes- 
sor's paper.] — I satisfied myself that I had better 
concede the fact that — my contemporaries are not 
so young as they have been, — and that, — awk- 
ward as it is, — science and history agree in telling 
me that I can claim the immunities and must own 
the humiliations of the early stage of senihty. Ah ! 
but we have all gone down the hill together. The 
dandies of my time have split their waistbands 
and taken to high-low shoes. The beauties of my 
recollections — where are they 1 They have run 
the gauntlet of years as well as I. First the years 
pelted them with red roses till their cheeks were 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 195 

all on lire. By and by they began throwing white 
roses, and that morning flush passed away. At 
last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and after 
that no year let the poor girls pass without throw- 
ing snow-balls. And then came rougher missiles, 
— ice and stones ; and from time to time an ar- 
row whistled, and down went one of the poor girls. 
So there are but few left ; and we don't call those 
few girls, but 

Ah me ! here am I groaning just as the old 
Greek sighed At, al! and the old Eoman, Eheu! 
I have no doubt we should die of shame and grief 
at the indignities offered us by age, if it were not 
that we see so many others as badly or worse off 
than ourselves. We always compare ourselves 
with our contemporaries. 

[I was interrupted in my reading just here. 
Before I began at the next breakfast, I read them 
these verses ; — I hope you will like them, and get 
a useful lesson from them.] 

THE LAST BLOSSOM. 

Though young no more, we still would dream 

Of beauty's dear deluding wiles; 
The leagues of life to graybeards seem 

Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles. 

Who knows a woman's wild caprice ? 

It played with Goethe's silvered hair, 
And many a Holy Father's " niece " 

Has softly smoothed the papal chair. 



196 THE AUTOCRAT 

When sixty bids us sigh in vain 
To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, 

We think upon those ladies twain 
Who loved so well the tough old Dean. 

We see the Patriarch's wintry face, 
The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, 

And dream that Youth and Age embrace, 
As April violets fill with snow. 

Tranced in her Lord's Olympian-smile 
His lotus-loving Memphian lies, — 

The musky daughter of the Nile 
With plaited hair and almond eyes. 

Might we but share one wild caress 
Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall, 

And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress 
The long cold kiss that waits us all ! 

My bosom heav-es, remembering yet 
The morning of that blissful day 

When Rose, the flower of spring, I met. 
And gave my raptured soul away. 

Flung from her eyes of purest blue, 
A lasso, with its leaping chain 

Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew 
O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain. 

Thou com'st to cheer my waning age, 
Sweet vision, waited for so long ! 

Dove that would seek the poet's cage 
Lured by the magic breath of song ! 

She blushes ! Ah, reluctant maid, 
Love's drapeau rouge the truth has told ! 

O'er girlhood's yielding barricade 
Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold ! 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 197 

Come to my arms ! — love heeds not years 5 
No frost the bud of passion knows. — 

Ha ! what is this my frenzy hears ? 
A voice behind me uttered, — Rose ! 

Sweet was her smile, — but not for me •, 

Alas, when woman looks too kind. 
Just turn your foolish head and see, — 

Some youth is walking close behind ! 

Af to giving up because the almanac or the 
Family-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I 
have no intention of doing any such thing. I 
grant you that I burn less carbon than some years 
ago. I see people of my standing really good for 
nothing, decrepit, effete, la levre inferieure deja pen- 
dante, with what little life they have left mainly 
concentrated in their epigastrium. But as the 
disease of old age is epidemic, endemic, and spo- 
radic, and everybody that lives long enough is 
sure to catch it, I am going to say, for the encour- 
agement of such as need it, how I treat the malady 
in my own case. 

First. As I feel, that, when I have anything to 
do, there is less time for it than when I was young- 
er, I find that I give my attention more thorough- 
ly, and use my time more economically than ever 
before ; so that I can learn anything twice as easily 
as in my earlier days. I am not, therefore, afraid 
to attack a new study. I took up a difficult lan- 
guage a very few years ago with good success, and 
think of mathematics and metaphysics by and by. 



198 THE AUTOCRAT 

Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a good 
many neglected privileges and pleasures within my 
reach, and requiring only a little courage to enjoy 
them. You may well suppose it pleased me to 
find that old Cato was thinking of learning to play 
the fiddle, when I had deliberately taken it up in 
my old age, and satisfied myself that I could get 
much comfort, if not much music, out of it. 

Thirdly. I have found that some of those active 
exercises, which are commonly thought to belong 
to young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much 
later period. 

A young friend has lately written an admirable 
article in one of the journals, entitled, " Saints and 
their Bodies." Approving of his general doctrines, 
and grateful for his records of personal experience, 
I cannot refuse to add my own experimental con- 
firmation of his eulogy of one particular form of 
active exercise and amusement, namely, boating. 
For the past nine years, I have rowed about, dur- 
ing a gpod part of the summer, on fresh or salt 
water. My present fleet on the river Charles con- 
sists of three row-boats. 1. A small flat-bottomed 
skifl" of the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend 
to boys. 2. A fancy " dory " for two pairs of 
sculls, in which I sometimes go out wdth my young 
folks, 3. My own particular water-sulky, a ^' skel- 
eton" or "shell" race-boat, twenty-two feet long, 
with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 199 

foot sculls, — alone, of course, as it holds but one^ 
and tips him out, if he does n't mind what he is 
about. In this I glide around the Back Bay, 
down the stream, up the Charles to Cambridge 
and Watertown, up the Mystic, round the wharves, 
in the wake of steamboats, which leave a swell af- 
ter them delightful to rock upon ; I linger under 
the bridges, — those " caterpillar bridges," as my 
brother professor so happily called them ; rub 
against the bladi sides of old wood-schooners ; 
cool down under the overhanging stern of some 
tall Indiaman ; stretch across to the Navy- Yard, 
where the sentinel warns me off from the Ohio, — 
just as if I should hurt her by lying in her shadow ; 
then strike out into the harbor, where the water 
gets clear and the air smells of the ocean, — till all 
at once I remember, that, if a west wind blows up 
of a sudden, I shall drift along past the islands, 
out of sight of the dear old State-house, — plate, 
tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home, but 
no chair drawn up at the table, — all the dear peo- 
ple waiting, waiting, waiting, while the boat is 
sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, where 
there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't want 
my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches 
in company with devil's-aprons, bladder-weeds, 
dead horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I turn 
about and flap my long, narrow wings for home. 
When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a 



200 THE AUTOCRAT 

splendid fight to get through the bridges, but al- 
ways make it a rule to beat, — though I have been 
jammed up into pretty tight places at times, and 
was caught once between a vessel swinging round 
and the pier, until our bones (the boat's, that is) 
cracked as if we had been in the jaws of Behemoth. 
Then back to my moorings at the foot of the Com- 
mon, off with the rowing-dress, dash under the 
green translucent wave, return to the garb of civi- 
lization, walk through my Garden, take a look at 
my elms on the Common, and, reaching my habi- 
tat, in consideration of my advanced period of life, 
indulge in the Elysian abandonment of a huge 
recumbent chair. 

When I have established a pair of well-pro- 
nounced feathering calluses on my thumbs, when 
I am in training so that I can do my fifteen miles 
at a stretch without coming to grief in any way, 
when I can perform my mile in eight minutes or 
a little less, then I feel as if I had old Time's 
head in chancery, and could give it to him at my 
leisure. 

I do not deny the attraction of walking. I 
have bored this ancient city through and through 
in my daily travels, until I know it as an old in- 
habitant of a Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, 
it was I who, in the course of these rambles, dis- 
covered that remarkable avenue called MyHle Street, 
stretching in one long line from east of the Reser- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 201 

voir to a precipitous and rudely-paved cliff which 
looks down on the grim abode of Science, and be- 
yond it to the far hills ; a promenade so delicious 
in its repose, so cheerfully varied with glimpses 
down the northern slope into busy Cambridge 
Street with its iron river of the horse-railroad, and 
wheeled barges gliding back and forward over it, 
— so delightfully closing at its western extremity 
in sunny courts and passages where I know peace, 
and beauty, and virtue, and serene old age must 
be perpetual tenants, — so alluring to all who de- 
sire to take their daily stroll, in the words of Dr. 
Watts,— 

" Alike unknowing and unknown," — 

that nothing but a sense of duty would have 
prompted me to reveal the secret of its existence. 
I concede, therefore, that walking is an immeasu- 
rably fine invention, of which old age ought con- 
stantly to avail itself 

Saddle-leather is in some respects even prefera- 
ble to sole-leather. The principal objection to it 
is of a financial character. But you may be sure 
that Bacon and Sydenham did not recommend it 
for nothing. One's hepar^ or, in vulgar language, 
liver, — a ponderous organ, weighing some three 
or four pounds, — goes up and down like the dash- 
er of a chum in the midst of the other vital ar- 
rangements, at every step of a trotting horse. The 



ao2 THE AUTOCRAT 

brains also are shaken up like coppers in a money- 
box. Riding is good, for those that are born with 
a silver-mounted bridle in their hand, and can ride 
as much and as often as they like, without think- 
ing all the time they hear that steady grinding 
sound as the horse's jaws triturate with calm lat- 
eral movement the bank-bills and promises to pay 
upon which it is notorious that the profligate ani- 
mal in question feeds day and night. 

Instead, however, of considering these kinds of 
exercise in this empirical way, I will devote a 
brief space to an examination of them in a more 
scientific form. 

The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely 
physical impression, and secondly to a sense of 
power in action. The first source of pleasure va- 
ries of course with our condition and the state of 
the surrounding circumstances ; the second with 
the amount and kind of power, and the extent 
and kind of action. In all forms of active exer- 
cise there are three powers simultaneously in ac- 
tion, — the will, the muscles, and the intellect. 
Each of these predominates in different kinds of 
exercise. In walking, the will and muscles are so 
accustomed to work together and perform their 
task with so little expenditure of force, that the 
intellect is left comparatively free. The mental 
pleasure in walking, as such, is in the sense of 
power over all our moving machinery. But in 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 203 

riding, I have the additional pleasure of govern- 
ing another will, and my muscles extend to the 
tip§ of the animal's ears and to his four hoofs, in- 
stead of stopping at my hands and feet. Now in 
this extension of my volition and my physical 
frame into another animal, my tyrannical instincts 
and my desire for heroic strength are at once grat- 
ified. "When the horse ceases to have a will of his 
own and his muscles require no special attention 
on your part, tlien you may live on horseback as 
Wesley did, and write sermons or take naps, as 
you like. But, you will observe, that, in riding 
on horseback, you always have a feeling that, after 
all, it is not you that do the work, but the animal, 
and this prevents the satisfaction from being com- 
plete. 

Now let us look at the conditions of rowing. I 
won't suppose you to be disgracing yourself in 
one of those miserable tubs, tugging in which is 
to rowing the true boat what riding a cow is to 
bestriding an Arab. You know the Esquimaux 
kai/ak', (if that is tlie name of it,) don't you ? 
Look at that model of one over my door. Sharp, 
rather? — On the contrary, it is a lubber to the 
one you and I must have; a Dutch fish-wife to 
Psyche, contrasted with what I will tell you about. 
— Our boat, then, is something of the shape of a 
pickerel, as you. look down upon his back, he ly- 
ing in the sunshine just where the sharp edge of 



204 THE AUTOCRAT 

the water cuts in among the lily-pads. It is a 
kind of a giant pod, as one may say, — tight 
everywhere, except in a little place in the middle, 
where you sit. Its length is from seven to ten 
yards, and as it is only from sixteen to thirty 
inches wide in its widest part, you understand 
why you want those " outriggers," or projecting 
iron frames with the rowlocks in which the oars 
play. My rowlocks are five feet apart; double 
the greatest width of the boat. 

Here you are, then, afloat with a body a rod 
and a half long, with arms, or wings, as you may 
choose to call them, stretching more than twenty 
feet from tip to tip ; every volition of yours ex- 
tending as perfectly into them as if your spinal 
cord ran down the centre strip of your boat, and 
the nerves of your arms tingled as far as the 
broad blades of your oars, — oars of spruce, bal- 
anced, leathered, and ringed under your own spe- 
cial direction. This, in sober earnest, is the near- 
est approach to flying that man has ever made or 
perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails with- 
out flapping his pinions, so you drift with the tide 
when you will, in the most luxurious form of lo- 
comotion indulged to an embodied spirit. But if 
your blood wants rousing, turn round that stake 
in the riter, which you see a mile from here ; and 
when you come in in sixteen minutes, (if you do, 
for we are old boys, and not champion scullers, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205 

you remember, ) then say if you begin to feel a lit- 
tle warmed up or not ! You can row easily and 
gently all day, and you can row yourself blind and 
black in the face in ten minutes, just as you like. It 
has been long agreed that there is no way in which 
a man can accomplish so much labor with his mus- 
cles as in rowing. It is in the boat, then, that 
man finds the largest extension of his volitional 
and muscular existence ; and yet he may tax both 
of them so slightly, in that most delicious of ex- 
ercises, that he shall mentally write his sermon, or 
his poem, or recall the remarks he has made in 
company and put them in form for the public, as 
well as in his easy-chair. 

I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the in- 
finite delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet 
June morning, when the river and bay are smooth 
as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along rip- 
ping it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the 
rent closing after me like those wounds of angels 
which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining for 
many a long rood behind me. To lie still over 
the Flats, where the waters are shallow, and see 
the crabs crawling and the sculpins gliding busily 
and silently beneath the boat, — to rustle in 
through the long harsh grass that leads up some 
tranquil creek, — to take shelter from the sun- 
beams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, 
and look down its interminable colonnades, crust- 



2o6 THE AUTOCRAT 

ed Avith green and oozy growths, studded with 
minute barnacles, and belted with rings of dark 
muscles, while overhead streams and thunders that 
other river whose every wave is a human soul 
flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the 
ocean, — lying there moored unseen, in loneliness 
so profound that the columns of Tadmor in the 
Desert could not seem more remote from life, — 
the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream 
whispering against the half-sunken pillars, — why 
should I tell of these things, that I should live to 
see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves 
blackened with boats as with a swarm of water- 
beetles ? What a city of idiots we must be not 
to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas 
and wherries, as we have just learned to cover the 
ice in winter with skaters ! 

I am satisfied that such a set of black-coat- 
ed, stiff'-jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned 
youth as we can boast in our Atlantic cities never 
before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. 
Of the females that are the mates of these males 
I do not here speak. I preached my sermon from 
the lay-pulpit on this matter a good while ago. 
Of course, if you heard it, you know my belief is 
that the total climatic influences here are getting 
up a number of new patterns of humanity, some 
of which are not an improvement on the old 
model. Clipper-built, sharp in the bows, long in 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 207 

the. spars, slender to look at, and fast to go, the 
ship, which is the great organ of our national life 
of relation, is but a reproduction of the typical 
form which the elements impress upon its builder. 
All this we cannot help ; but we can make the 
best of these influences, such as they are. We 
have a few good boatmen, — no good horsemen 
that I hear of, — I cannot speak for cricketing, — 
but as for any great athletic feat performed by a 
gentleman in these latitudes, society w^ould drop 
a man who should run round the Common in five 
minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, single- 
stick players, and boxers we have no reason to 
be ashamed of Boxing is rough play, but not 
too rough for' a hearty young fellow. Anything 
is better than this white-blooded degeneration to 
which we all tend. 

I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibi- 
tion only last evening. It did my heart good to 
see that there were a few young and youngish 
youths left who could take care of their own heads 
in case of emergency. It is a fine sight, that of 
a gentleman resolving himself into the primitive 
constituents of his humanity. Here is a delicate 
young man now, with an intellectual countenance, 
a slight figure, a sub-pallid complexion, a most 
unassuming deportment, a mild adolescent in fact, 
that any Hiram or Jonathan from between the 
ploughtails would of course expect to handle with 



2o8 THE AUTOCRAT 

perfect ease. O, he is taking off his gold-bowed 
spectacles ! Ah, he is divesting himself of his 
cravat ! Why, he is stripping off his coat ! Well, 
here he is, sure enough, in a tight silk shirt, and 
with two things that look like batter puddings in 
the place of his fists. Now see that other fellow 
with another pair of batter puddings, — the big 
one with the broad shoulders ; he will certainly 
knock the little man^s head off, if he strikes him. 
Feinting, dodging, stopping, hitting, countering, 
— little man's head not off yet. You might as 
well try to jump upon your own shadow as to hit 
the little man's intellectual features. He need n't 
have taken off the gold-bowed spectacles at all. 
Quick, cautious, shifty, nimble, cool, he catches 
all the fierce lunges or gets out of their reach, till 
his turn comes, and then, whack goes one of the 
batter puddings against the big one's ribs, and 
bang goes the other into the big one's face, and, 
staggering, shuffling, slipping, tripping, collaps- 
ing, sprawling, down goes the big one in a mis- 
cellaneous bundle. — If my young friend, whose 
excellent article I have referred to, could only in- 
troduce the manly art of self-defence among the 
clergy, I am satisfied that we should have better 
sermons and an infinitely less quarrelsome church- 
militant. A bout with the gloves would let off 
the ill-nature, and cure the indigestion, which, 
united, have embroiled their subject in a bitter^ 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 209 

controversy. We should then often hear that a 
point of difference between an infallible and a 
heretic, instead of being vehemently discussed in 
a series of newspaper articles, had been settled by 
a friendly contest in several rounds, at the close 
of which the parties shook hands and appeared 
cordially reconciled. 

But boxing you and I are too old for, I am 
afraid. I was for a moment tempted, by the con- 
tagion of muscular electricity last evening, to try 
the gloves with the Benicia Boy, who looked in 
as a fiiend to the noble art; but remembering 
that he had twice my weight and half my age, 
besides the advantage of his training, I sat still 
and said nothing. 

There is one other delicate point I wish to 
speak of with reference to old age. I refer to the 
use of dioptric media which correct the diminished 
refracting power of the humors of the eye, — in 
other words, spectacles. I don^t use them. All 
I ask is a large, fair type, a strong daylight or 
gas-light, and one yard of focal distance, and my 
eyes are as good as ever. But if your eyes fail, I 
can tell you something encouraging. There is 
now living in New York State an old gentleman 
who, perceiving his sight to fail, immediately took 
to exercising it on the finest print, and in this 
way fairly bullied Nature out of her foolish habit 
of taking liberties at five-and-forty, or thereabout. 
14 



2IO THE AUTOCRAT 

And now this old gentleman performs the most 
extraordinary feats with his pen, showing that his 
eyes must be a pair of microscopes. I should be 
afraid to say to you how much he writes in the 
compass of a half-dime, — whether the Psalms or 
the Gospels, or the Psalms and the Gospels, I 
won^t be positive. 

But now let me tell you this. If the time comes 
when you must lay down the fiddle and the bow, 
because your fingers are too stiff, and drop the 
ten-foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, 
and, after dallying awhile with eye-glasses, come 
at last to the undisguised reality of spectacles, — 
if the time comes when that fire of life we spoke 
of has burned so low that where its flames rever- 
berated there is only the sombre stain of regret, 
and where its coals glowed, only the white ashes 
that cover the embers of memory, — don't let your 
heart grow cold, and you may carry cheerfulness 
and love wdth you into the teens of your second 
century, if you can last so long. As our friend, 
the Poet, once said, in some of those old-fashioned 
heroics of his which he keeps for his private read- 
ing,— 

Call him not old, whose visionary brain 

Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. 

For him in vain the envious seasons roll 

Who bears eternal summer in his soul. 

If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, 

Spring with her birds, or children with their play, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 211 

Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art 
Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, — 
Turn to the record where his years are told, — 
Count his gray hairs, — they cannot make him old ! 
End of the Professor'' s paper. 

[The above essay was not read at one time, but 
in several instalments, and accompanied by vari- 
ous comments from different persons at the table. 
The company were in the main attentive, with the 
exception of a little somnolence on the part of the 
old gentleman opposite at times, and a few sly, 
malicious questions about the " old boys " on the 
part of that forward young fellow who has figured 
occasionally, not always to his advantage, in these 
reports. 

On Sunday mornings, in obedience to a feeling 
I am not ashamed of, I have always tried to give 
a more appropriate character to our conversation. 
I have never read them my sermon yet, and I 
don't know that I shall, as some of them might 
take my convictions as a personal indignity to 
themselves. But having read our company so 
much of the Professor's talk about age and other 
subjects connected with physical life, I took the 
next Sunday morning to repeat to them the follow- 
ing poem of his, which I have had by me some 
time. He calls it — I suppose, for his professional 
friends — TuE Anatomist's Hymn: but I shall 
name it — 1 



212 THE AUTOCRAT 



THE LIVING TEMPLE. 

Not in the world of light alone, 
Where God has built his blazing throne, 
Nor yet alone in earth below, 
With belted seas that come and go. 
And endless isles of sunlit green, 
Is all thy Maker's glory seen : 
Look in upon thy wondrous frame, — 
Eternal wisdom still the same ! 

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves 
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves, 
Whose streams of brightening purple rush 
Fired with a new and livelier blush. 
While all their burden of decay 
The ebbing current steals away, 
And red with Nature's flame they start 
From the warm fountains of the heart. 

-No rest that throbbing slave may ask, 
Forever quivering o'er his task. 
While far and wide a crimson jet 
Leaps forth to fill the woven net 
Which in unnumbered crossing tides 
The flood of burning life divides, 
Then kindling each decaying part 
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. 

But warmed with that unchanging flame 
Behold the outward moving frame, 
Its living marbles jointed strong 
With glistening band and silvery thong. 
And linked to reason's guiding reins 
By myriad rings in trembling chains, 
Each graven with the threaded zone 
Which claims it as the master's own. 



OF THE BREAKFAST'TABLE. 213 

See how yon beam of seeming white 

Is braided out of seven-hued light, 

Yet in those lucid globes no ray 

By any chance shall break astray. . * 

Hark how the rolling surge of sound, 

Arches and spirals circling round, 

Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear 

With music it is heaven to hear. 

Then mark the cloven sphere that holds 
All thought in its mysterious folds, 
That feels sensation's faintest thrill 
And flashes forth the sovereign will } 
Think on the stormy world that dwells 
Locked in its dim and clustering cells ! 
The lightning gleams of power it sheds 
Along its hollow glassy threads ! 

O Father ! grant thy love divine 
To make these mystic temples thine ! 
When wasting age and wearying strife 
Have sapped the leaning walls of life. 
When darkness gathers over all, 
And the last tottering pillars fall. 
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms • 
And mould it into heavenly forms ! 




214 ^^^ AUTOCRAT 




VIII. 

PEING has come. You will find some 
verses to that effect at the end of these 
notes. If you are an impatient reader, 
skip to them at once. In reading aloud, 
omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh verses. 
These are parenthetical and digressive, and, unless 
your audience is of superior intelligence, vjiW con- 
fuse them. Many people can ride on horseback 
who find it hard to get on and to get off without 
assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, 
and get into the saddle again at every parenthe- 
sis.] 

The old gentleman who sits opposite, find- 
ing that spring had fairly come, mounted a white 
hat one day, and walked into the street. It seems 
to have been a premature or otherwise excep- 
tionable exhibition, not unlike that commemo- 
rated by the late Mr. Bayly. When the old gen- 
tleman came home, he looked very red in the face, 
and complained that he had been " made sport of." 
By sympathizing questions, I learned from him 
that a boy had called him " old daddy," and asked 
him when he had his hat whitewashed. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 215 

This incident led me to make some observations 
at the table the next morning, which I here repeat 
for the benefit of the readers of this record. 

The hat is the vulnerable point of the arti- 
ficial integument. I learned this in early boyhood. 
I was once equipped in a hat of Leghorn straw, 
having a brim of much wider dimensions than were 
usual at that time, and sent to school in that por- 
tion of my native town which lies nearest to this 
metropolis. On my way I was met by a " Port- 
chuck/^ as we used to call the young gentlemen, 
of that locality, and the following dialogue en- 
sued. 

Tlie Port-chuck. Hullo, You-sir, joo know th' 
wuz gon-to be a race to-morrah ? 

Myself. No. Who ^s gon-to run, ^n* wher's't 
gon-to be ? 

The Port-chuch. Squire Mico 'n' Doctor Wil- 
iams, round the brim o^ your hat. 

These two much-respected gentlemen being the 
oldest inhabitants at that time, and the alleged 
race-course being out of the question, the Port- 
chuck also winking and thrusting his tongue into 
his cheek, I perceived that I had been trifled with, 
and the effect has been to make me sensitive and 
observant respecting this article of dress ever since. 
Here is an axiom or two relating to it. 

A hat which has been popped, or exploded by 
being sat down upon, is never itself again after- 
wards. 



21 6 THE AUTOCRAT 

It is a favorite illusion of sanguine natures to 
believe tlje contrary. 

Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic 
as its hat. There is always an unnatural calm- 
ness about its nap, and an unwholesome gloss, 
suggestive of a wet brush. 

The last effort of decayed fortune is expended 
in smoothing its dilapidated castor. The hat is the 
ultimum moriens of " respectability. '' 

The old gentleman took all these remarks 

and maxims very pleasantly, saying, however, that 
he had forgotten most of his French except the 
word for potatoes, — pummies de tare. — Ultimum 
moriens J I told him, is old Italian, and signifies 
last thing to die. With this explanation he was well 
contented, and looked quite calm when I saw him 
afterwards in the entry with a black hat on his 
head and the white one in his hand. 

1 think myself fortunate in having the Poet 

and the Professor for my intimates. We are so 
much together, that we no doubt think and talk a 
good deal alike ; yet our points of view are in 
many respects individual and peculiar. You know 
me well enough by this time. I have not talked 
with you so long for nothing, and therefore I don't 
think it necessary to draw my own portrait. But 
let me say a word or two about my friends. 

The Professor considers himself, and I consider 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 217 

him, a very useful and worthy kind of drudge. I 
think he has a pride in his small technicalities. I 
know that he has a great idea of fidelity ; and 
though I suspect he laughs a little inwardly at 
times at the grand airs " Science " puts on, as she 
stands marking time, but not getting on, while the 
trumpets are blowing and the big drums beating, 

— yet I am sure he has a liking for his specialty, 
and a respect for its cultivators. 

But I '11 tell you what the Professor said to the 
Poet the other day. — My boy, said he, I can work 
a great deal cheaper than you, because I keep all 
my goods in the lower story. You have to hoist 
yours into the upper chambers of the brain, and 
let them down again to your customers. I take 
mine in at the level of the ground, and send them 
off from my doorstep almost ^N-ithout lifting. I 
tell you, the higher a man has to carry the raw 
material of thought before he works it up, the 
more it costs him in blood, nerve, and muscle. 
Coleridge knew all this very well when he advised 
every literary man to have a profession. 

Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, 

and sometimes with the other. After a while I 
get tired of both. When a fit of intellectual dis- 
gust comes over me, I will tell you what I have 
found admirable as a diversion, in addition to boat- 
ing and other amusements which I have spoken of, 

— that is, working at my carpenter's-bench. Some 



21 8 THE AUTOCRAT 

mechanical employment is the greatest possible 
relief, after the purely intellectual faculties begin 
to tire. When I was quarantined once at Mar- 
seilles, I got to work immediately at carving a 
wooden wonder of loose rings on a stick, and got 
so interested in it, that, when we were set loose, I 
" regained my freedom with a sigh,^^ because my 
toy was unfinished. 

There are long seasons when I talk only with 
the Professor, and others when I give myself 
wholly up to the Poet. Now that my winter's 
work is over, and spring is with us, I feel natu- 
rally drawn to the Poet's company. I don't know 
anybody more alive to life than he is. The pas- 
sion of poetry seizes on him every spring, he says, 

— yet oftentimes he complains, that, when he feels 
most, he can sing least. 

Then a fit of despondency comes over him. — I 
feel ashamed, sometimes, — said he, the other day, 

— to think how far my worst songs fall below my 
best. It sometimes seems to me, as I know it does 
to others who have told me so, that they ought to 
be all best, — if not in actual execution, at least in 
plan and motive. I am grateful — he continued 

— for all such criticisms. A man is always 
pleased to have his most serious efforts praised, 
and the highest aspect of his nature get the most 
sunshine. 

Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 219 

many minds must change their key now and then, 
on penalty of getting out of tune or losing their 
voices. You know, I suppose, — he said, — what 
is meant by complementary colors 1 You know 
the effect, too, which the prolonged impression of 
any one color has on the retina. If you close your 
eyes after looking steadily at a red object, you see 
a green image. 

It is so with many minds, — I will not say with 
all. After looking at one aspect of external na- 
ture, or of any form of beauty or truth, when they 
turn away, the complementary/ aspect of the same 
object stamps itself irresistibly and automatically 
upon the mind. Shall they give expression to 
this secondary mental state, or not? 

When I contemplate — said my friend, the Poet 
— the infinite largeness of comprehension belong- 
ing to the Central Intelligence, how remote the 
creative conception is from all scholastic and ethi- 
cal formulcTe, I am led to think that a healthy mind 
ought to change its mood from time to time, and 
come down from its noblest condition, — never, of 
course, to degrade itself by dwelling upon what is 
itself debasing, but to let its lower faculties have a 
chance to air and exercise themselves. After the 
first and second floor have been out in the bright 
street dressed in all their splendors, shall not our 
humble friends in the basement have their holiday, 
and the cotton velvet and the thin-skinned jewelry 



220 THE AUTOCRAT 

— simple adornments, but befitting the station of 
those who wear them — show themselves to the 
crowd, who think them beautiful, as they ought 
to, though the people up stairs know that they 
are cheap and perishable 1 

1 don't know that I may not bring the 

Poet here, some day or other, and let him speak 
for himself. Still I think I can tell you what he 
says quite as well as he could do it. — 0, — he 
said to me, one day, — I am but a hand-organ 
man, — say rather, a hand-organ. Life turns the 
winch, and fancy or accident pulls out the stops. 
I come under your windows, some fine spring 
morning, and play you one of my adagio move- 
ments, and some of you say, — This is good, — 
play us so always. But, dear friends, if I did 
not change the stop sometimes, the machine would 
wear out in one part and rust in another. How 
easily this or that tune flows ! — you say, — there 
must be no end of just such melodies in him. 

— I will open the poor machine for you one mo- 
ment, and you shall look. — Ah ! Every note 
marks where a spur of steel has been driven in. 
It is easy to grind out the song, but to plant these 
bristling points which make it was the painful task 
of time. 

I don't like to say it, — he continued, — but 
poets commonly have no larger stock of tunes 
than hand-organs ; and when you hear them pip- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 221 

ing up under your window, you know pretty well 
what to expect. The more stops, the better. Do 
let them all be pulled out in their turn ! 

So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me one 
of his stateliest songs, and after it- a gay chanson, 
and then a string of epigrams. All true, — he 
said, — all flowers of his soul ; only one with the 
corolla spread, and another with its disk half 
opened, and the third with the heart-leaves cov- 
ered up and only a petal or two showing its tip 
through the calyx. The water-lily is the type of 
the poet's soul, — he told me. 

What do you think, sir, — said the divini- 

ity-student, — opens the souls of poets most fully ? 

Why, there must be the internal force and the 
external stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. 
A rose will not flower in the dark, and a fern 
will not flower anywhere. 

What do I think is the true sunshine that opens 
the poet's corolla ? — I don't like to say. They 
spoil a good many, I am afraid ; or at least they 
shine on a good many that never come to any- 
thing. 

Who are tJtei/ ? — said the schoolmistress. 

Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and 
their praise is his best reward. 

The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked 
pleased. — Did I really think so? — I do think so ; 
I never feel safe until I have pleased them ; I don't 



222 THE AUTOCRAT 

think they are the first to see one's defects, but 
they are the first to catch the color and fragrance 
of a true poem. Fit the same intellect to a man 
and it is a bow-string, — to a woman and it is a 
harp-string. She is vibratile and resonant all 
over, so she stirs with slighter musical tremblings 

of the air about her. Ah me ! — said my 

friend the Poet, to me, the other day, — what 
color would it not have given to my thoughts, 
and what thrice-washed whiteness to my words, 
had I been fed on women's praises. I should 
have grown like MarvelFs fawn, — 

" Lilies without ; roses within ! " 

But then, — he added, we all think, if so and so, 
we should have been this or that, as you were say- 
ing, the other day, in those rhymes of yours. 

1 don't think there are many poets in the 

sense of creators ; but of those sensitive natures 
which reflect themselves naturally in soft and me- 
lodious words, pleading for sympathy with their 
joys and sorrows, every literature is full. Nature 
carves with her own hands the brain which holds 
the creative imagination, but she casts the over- 
sensitive creatures in scores from the same mould. 

There are two kinds of poets, just as there are 
two kinds of blondes. [Movement of curiosity 
among our ladies at table. — Please to tell us 
about those blondes, said the schoolmistress.] 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 223 

Why, there are blondes who are such simply by 
deficiency of coloring matter, — negative or washed 
blondes, arrested by Nature on the way to be- 
come albincsses. There are others that are shot 
through with golden light, with tawny or fulvous 
tinges in various degree, — positive or stained 
blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as un- 
like in their mode of being to the others as an 
orange is unlike a snowball. The albino-style 
carries with it a wide pupil and a sensitive retina. 
The other, or the leonine blonde, has an opaline 
fire in her clear eye, which the brunette can hard- 
ly match with her quick glittering glances. 

Just so we have the great sun-kindled, construc- 
tive imaginations, and a far more numerous class 
of poets who have a certain kind of moonlight- 
genius given them to compensate for their imper- 
fection of nature. Their want of mental coloring- 
matter makes them sensitive to those impressions 
which stronger minds neglect or never feel at all. 
Many of them die young, and all of them are 
tinged with melancholy. There is no more beau- 
tiful illustration of the principle of compensation 
which marks the Divine benevolence than the fact 
that some of the holiest lives and some of the 
sweetest songs are the growth of the infirmity 
which unfits its subject for the rougher duties of 
life. When one reads the life of Cowper, or of 
Keats, or of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, — 



224 ^^^ AUTOCRAT 

of so many gentle, sweet natures, born to weak- 
ness, and mostly dying before their time, — one 
cannot help thinking that the human race dies 
out singing, like the swan in the old story. The 
French poet, Gilbert, who died at the Hotel Dieu, 
at the age of twenty-nine, — (killed by a key in 
his throat, which he had swallowed when delirious 
in consequence of a fall,) — this poor fellow was 
a very good example of the poet by excess of sen- 
sibility. I found, the other day, that some of my 
literary friends had never heard of him, though I 
suppose few educated Frenchmen do not know 
the lines which he wrote, a week before his death, 
upon a mean bed in the great hospital of Paris. 

" Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive, 
J'apparus un jour, et je meurs ; 
Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, ou lentement j'arrive, 
Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs." 

At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest, 

One day I pass, then disappear ; 
I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest 

No friend shall come to shed a tear. 

You remember the same thing in other words 
somewhere in Kirke White's poems. It is the 
burden of the plaintive songs of all these sweet 
albino-poets. " I shall die and be forgotten, and 
the world will go on just as if I had never been ; 
— and yet how I have loved ! how I have longed ! 
how I have aspired ! " And so singing, their 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 225 

eyes grow brighter and brighter, and their fea- 
tures thinner and thinner, until at last the veil of 
flesh is threadbare, and, still singing, they drop it 
and pass onward. 

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The 

Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then 
closes the case, and gives the key into the hand 
of the Angel of the Resurrection. 

Tic-tac ! tic-tac ! go the wheels of thought ; our 
will cannot stop them ; they cannot stop them- 
selves ; sleep cannot still them ; madness only 
makes them go faster; death alone can break 
into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pen- 
dulum, which we call the heart, silence at last 
the clicking of the terrible escapement we have 
carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads. 

If we could only get at them, as we lie on our 
pillows and count the dead beats of thought after 
thought and image after image jarring through the 
overtired organ ! Will nobody block those wheels, 
uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds 
those weights, blow up the infernal machine with 
gunpowder ? What a passion comes over us 
sometimes for silence and rest ! — that this dread- 
ful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of 
time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and 
death, could have but one brief holiday ! Who 
can wonder that men swing themselves off from 

15 



226 TEE AUTOCRAT 

beams in hempen lassos ? — that they jump off 
from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters 
beneath ? — that they take counsel of the grim 
friend who has but to utter his one peremptory 
monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered 
as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor ? 
Under that building which we pass every day 
there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor 
bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which 
a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall b}^ any 
chance be seen. There is nothing for it, when the 
brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but 
to spring against the stone wall and silence them 
with one crash. Ah, they remembered that, — the 
kind city fathers, — and the wklls are nicely pad- 
ded, so that one can take such exercise as he likes 
without damaging himself on the very plain and 
serviceable upholstery. If anybody would only 
contrive some kind of a lever that one could thrust 
in among the works of this horrid automaton and 
check them, or alter their rate of going, what 
would the world give for the discovery? 

From half a dime to a dime, according to 

the style of the place and the quality of the liquor, 
— said the young fellow whom they call John. 

You speak trivially, but not unwisely, — I said. 
Unless the will maintain a certain control over 
these movements, which it cannot stop, but can to 
some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 227 

get at the machine by some indirect system of lev- 
erage or other. They clap on the brakes by means 
of opium ; they change the maddening monotony 
of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. It 
is because the brain is locked up and we cannot 
touch its movement directly, that we thrust these 
coarse tools in through any crevice by which they 
may reach the interior, and so alter its rate of 
going for a while, and at last spoil the machine. 

Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the 
mind which work independently of the will, — 
poets and artists, for instance, who follow their 
imagination in their creative moments, instead of 
keeping it in hand as your logicians and practical 
men do with their reasoning faculty, — such men 
are too apt to pall in the mechanical appliances to 
help them govern their intellects. 

He means they get drunk, — said the young 

fellow already alluded to by name. 

Do you think men of true genius are apt to in- 
dulge in the use of inebriating fluids ? — said the 
divinity-student. 

If you think you are strong enough to bear 
what I am going to say, — I replied, — I will talk 
to you about this. But mind, now, these are 
the things that some foolish people call dangerous 
subjects, — as if these vices which burrow into 
people^s souls, as the Guinea-worm burrows into 
the naked feet of West-Indian slaves, would be 



228 THE AUTOCRAT 

more mischievous when seen than out of sight. 
Now the true way to deal with those obstinate 
animals, which are a dozen feet long, some of 
them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to get a 
piece of silk round their heads, and pull them out 
very cautiously. If you only break them off, they 
grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill the 
person who has the misfortune to harbor one of 
them. Whence it is plain that the first thing to 
do is to find out where the head lies. 

Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this 
vice of intemperance. What is the head of it, 
and where does it lie? For you may depend 
upon it, there is not one of these vices that has 
not a head of its own, — an intelligence, — a 
meaning, — a certain virtue, I was going to say, 
— but that might, perhaps, sound paradoxical. 
I have heard an immense number of moral phy- 
sicians lay down the treatment of moral Guinea- 
worms, and the vast majority of them would al- 
ways insist that the creature had no head at all, 
but was all body and tail. So I have found a 
very common result of their method to be that the 
string slipped, or that a piece only of the creature 
was broken off, and the worm soon grew again, 
as bad as ever. The truth is, if the Devil could 
only appear in church by attorney, and make the 
best statement that the facts would bear him out 
in doing on behalf of his special virtues, (what we 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 229 

commonly call vices,) the influence of good teach- 
ers would be much greater than it is. For the 
arguments by which the Devil prevails are pre- 
cisely the ones that the Devil-queller most rarely 
answers. The way to argue down a vice is, not 
to tell lies about it, — to say that it has no attrac- 
tions, when everybody knows that it has, — but 
rather to let it make out its case just as it cer- 
tainly will in the moment of temptation, and then 
meet it with the weapons furnished by the Divine 
armory. Ithuriel did not spit the toad on his 
spear, you remember, but touched him with it, 
and the blasted angel took the sad glories of 
his true shape. If he had shown fight then, the 
fair spirits would have known how to deal with 
him. 

That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is 
not perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxicated 
with music, with poetry, with religious excite- 
ment, — oftenest with love. Ninon de TEnclos 
said she was so easily excited that her soup in- 
toxicated her, and convalescents have been made 
tipsy by a beef-steak. 

There are forms and stages of alcoholic ex- 
altation, which, m themselves, and without regard 
to their consequences, might be considered as 
positive improvements of the persons affected. 
When the sluggish intellect is roused, the slow 
speech quickened, the cold nature warmed, the 



230 THE AUTOCRAT 

latent sympathy developed, the flagging spirit 
kindled, — before the trains of thought become 
confused, or the will perverted, or the muscles 
relaxed, — just at the moment when the whole 
human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown rose, 
and is ripe for the subscription-paper or the con- 
tribution-box, — it would be hard to say that a 
man was, at that very time, worse, or less to be 
loved, than when driving a hard bargain with all 
his meaner wits about him. The difficulty is, 
that the alcoholic virtues don't wash ; but until 
the water takes their colors out, the tints are very 
much like those of the true celestial stuff*. 

[Here I was interrupted by a question which I 
am very unwilling to report, but have confidence 
enough in those friends who examine these rec- 
ords to commit to their candor. 

A person at table asked me whether I " went in 
for rum as a steady drink ? '' — His manner made 
the question highly offensive, but I restrained 
myself, and answered thus : — ] 

Rum I take to be the name which unwashed 
moralists apply alike to the product distilled from 
molasses and the noblest juices of the vineyard. 
Burgundy "in all its sunset glow " is rum. Cham- 
pagne, " the foaming wine of Eastern France,^' is 
rum. Hock, which our friend, the Poet, speaks 
of as 

" The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright, 
Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light," 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 231 

is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism 
as an insult to the first miracle wrought by the 
Founder of our religion ! I address myself to the 
company. — I believe in temperance, nay, almost 
in abstinence, as a rule for healthy people. I 
trust that I practise both. But let me tell you, 
there are companies of men of genius into which 
I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect 
and sentiment is so much more stimulating than 
alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take wine, it 
would be to keep me sober. 

Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, 
if any,, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken 
acquaintances were generally ruined before they 
became drunkards. The habit of drinking is 
often a vice, no doubt, — sometimes a misfortune, 
as when an almost irresistible hereditary propen- 
sity exists to indulge in it, — but oftenest of all a 
punishment. 

Empty heads, — heads without ideas in whole- 
some variety and sufiicient number to furnish food 
for the mental clockwork, — ill-regulated heads, 
where the faculties are not under the control of 
the will, — these are the ones that hold the brains 
which their owners are so apt to tamper with, by 
• introducing the appliances we have been talking 
about. Now, when a gentleman's brain is empty 
or ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own 
fault ; and so it is simple retribution, that, wliile 



232 THE AUTOCRAT 

he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, 
the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and 
sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its 
hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams ! 
I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply 
this to the neglected poor, who have had no 
chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, 
and to be taught the lesson of self-government. I 
trust the tariff of Heaven has an ad valorem scale 
for them — and all of us. 

But to come back to poets and artists ; — if 
they really are more prone to the abuse of stimu- 
lants, — and I fear that this is true, — the- reason 
of it is only too clear. A man abandons himself 
to a fine frenzy, and the power which flows 
through him, as I once explained to you, makes 
him the medium of a great poem or a great pic- 
ture. The creative action is not voluntary at all, 
but automatic; we can only put the mind into 
the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that 
blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus 
the true state of creative genius is allied to rev- 
erie, or dreaming. If mind and body were both 
healthy and had food enough and fair play, I 
doubt whether any men would be more temperate 
than the imaginative classes. But body and mind* 
often flag, — perhaps they are ill-made to begin 
with, underfed with bread or ideas, overworked, 
or abused in some way. The automatic action, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 233 

by which genius wrought its wonders, fails. 
There is only one thing which can rouse the 
machine ; not will, — that cannot reach it ; noth- 
ing but a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels 
awliile and soon eats out the heart of the mechan- 
ism. The dreaming faculties are always the dan- 
gerous ones, because their mode of action can be 
imitated by artificial excitement ; the reasoning 
ones are safe, because they imply continued vol- 
untary effort. 

I think you will find it true, that, before any 
vice can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral 
nature must be debilitated. The mosses and 
fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; 
and the odious parasites which fasten on the 
human frame choose that which is already en- 
feebled. ' Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, de- 
clared that he had such a healthy skin it was 
impossible for any impurity to stick to it, and 
maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a 
face which was of necessity always clean. I don't 
know how much fancy thefe was in this ; but 
there is no fancy in saying that the lassitude of 
tired-out operatives, and the languor of imagina- 
tive natures in their periods of collapse, and the 
vacuity of minds untrained to labor and discipline, 
fit the soul and body for the germination of the 
seeds of intemperance. 

Whenever the wandering demon of Drunken- 



234 ^^^ AUTOCRAT 

ness finds a ship adrift, — no steady wind in its 
sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course, — 
he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers 
straight for the maelstrom. 

1 wonder if you know the terrible smile ? 

[The young fellow whom they call John winked 
very hard, and made a jocular remark, the sense 
of which seemed to depend on some double mean- 
ing of the word smile. The company was curious 
to know what I meant.] 

There are persons, — I said, — who no sooner 
come within sight of you than they begin to smile, 
with an uncertain movement of the mouth, which 
conveys the idea that they are thinking about 
themselves, and thinking, too, that you are think- 
ing they are thinking about themselves, — and so 
look at you with a wretched mixture of self-con- 
sciousness, awkwardness, and attempts to carry 
off both, which are betrayed by the cowardly be- 
havior of the eye and the tell-tale weakness of the 
lips that characterize these unfortunate beings. 

Why do you call them unfortunate, sir ? — 

asked the divinity-student. 

Because it is evident that the consciousness of 
some imbecility or other is at the bottom of this 
extraordinary expression. I don't think, -however, 
that these persons are commonly fools. I have 
known a number, and all of them were intelligent. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 235 

I think nothing conveys the idea of undei'breeding 
more than this self-betraying smile. Yet I think 
this peculiar habit as well as that of meaningless 
blushing may be fallen into by very good people 
who meet often, or sit opposite each other at table. 
A true gentleman^s face is infinitely removed from 
all such paltriness, — calm-eyed, firm-mouthed. I 
think Titian understood the look of a gentleman 
as well as anybody that ever lived. The portrait 
of a young man holding a glove in his hand, in 
the Gallery of the Louvre, if any of you have 
seen that collection, will remind you of what I 
mean. 

Do I think these people know the peculiar 

look they have ? — I cannot say ; I hope not ; I 
am afraid they would never forgive me, if they 
did. The worst of it is, the trick is catching; 
when one meets one of these fellows, he feels a 
tendency to the same manifestation. The Profes- 
sor tells me there is a muscular slip, a dependence 
of the platysma myoides, which is called the risorius 
Santonni. 

Say that once more, — exclaimed the young 

fellow mentioned above. 

The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip 
called Santorini's laughing muscle. I would have 
it cut out of my face, if I were born with one of 
those constitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am 
uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-look- 



236 THE AUTOCRAT 

ing people I told you of the other day, and of 
these smiling folks. It may be that they are born 
with these looks, as other people are with more 
generally recognized deformities. Both are bad 
enough, but I had rather meet three of the scowl- 
ers than one of the smilers. 

There is another unfortunate way of look- 
ing, which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do 
not like to find fault with. There are some very 
pretty, but, unhappily, very ill-bred women, who 
don't understand the law of the road with regard 
to handsome faces. Nature and custom would, no 
doubt, agree in conceding to all males the right of 
at least two distinct looks at every comely female 
countenance, without any infraction of the rules 
of courtesy or the sentiment of respect. The first 
look is necessary to define the person of the in- 
dividual one meets so as to avoid it in passing. 
Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance 
is a sufiicient apology 'for a second, — not a pro- 
longed and impertinent stare, but an appreciating 
homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inof- 
fensively yield to a passing image. It is astonish- 
ing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties 
are to the slightest demonstration of this kind. 
When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her 
virtuous-indignation countenance at home ; she 
knows well enough that the street is a picture- 
gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bon- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 237 

nets are meant to be seen, and everybody has a 
right to see them. 

When we observe how the same features 

and style of person and character descend from 
generation to generation, we can believe that some 
inherited weakness may account for these petuliar- 
ities. Little snapping-turtles snap — so the great 
naturalist tells us — before they are out of the egg- 
shell. I am satisfied, that, much higher up in the 
scale of life, character is distinctly shown at the 
age of — 2 or — 3 months. 

My friend, the Professor, has been full of 

eggs lately. [This remark excited a burst of hi- 
larity, which I did not allow to interrupt the course 
of my observations.] He has been reading the 
great book where he found the fact about the little 
snapping-turtles mentioned above. Some of the 
things he has told me have suggested several odd 
analogies enough. 

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in 
their brains the ovarian eggs of the next genera- 
tion's or century's civilization. These eggs are 
not ready to be laid in the form of books as yet ; 
some of them are hardly ready to be put into the 
form of talk. But as rudimentary ideas or in- 
choate tendencies, there they are ; ' and these are 
what must form the future. A man's general no- 
tions are not good for much, unless he has a crop 
of these intellectual ovarian eggs in his own brain, 



238 THE AUTOCRAT 

or knows them as they exist in the minds of oth- 
ers. One must be in the habit of talking with 
such persons to get at these rudimentary germs of 
thought ; for their development is necessarily im- 
perfect, and they are moulded on new patterns, 
which must be long and closely studied. But 
these are the men to talk with. No fresh truth 
ever gets into a book. 

A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow, — 

said one of the company. 

I proceeded in spite of the interruption. — All 
uttered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is 
of the nature of an excretion. Its materials have 
been taken in, and have acted upon the system, 
and been reacted on by it ; it has circulated and 
done its office in one mind before it is given out 
for the benefit of others. It may be milk or ven- 
om to other minds ; but, in either case, it is some- 
thing which the producer has had the use of and 
can part with. A man instinctively tries to get 
rid of his thought in conversation or in print so 
soon as it is matured ; but it is hard to get at it 
as it lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ 
of a germ, in his intellect. 

— — Where are the brains that are fullest of 
these ovarian eggs of thought ? — I decline men- 
tioning individuals. The producers of thought, 
who are few, the " jobbers'' of thought, who are 
many, and the retailers of thought, who are num- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 239 

berless, are so mixed up in the popular appre- 
hension, that it would be hopeless to try to sepa- 
rate them before opinion has had time to settle. 
Follow the course of opinion on the great subjects 
of human interest for a few generations or cen- 
turies, get its parallax, map out a small arc of its 
movement, see where it tends, and then see who 
is in advance of it or even with it ; the world 
calls him hard names, probably ; but if you would 
find the ovn of the future, you must look into the 
folds of his cerebral convolutions. 

[The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at 
this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where 
he was to come out, if he computed his arc too 
nicely. I think it possible it might cut off a few 
corners of his present belief, as it has cut off mar- 
tyr-burning and witch-hanging; — but time will 
show, — time will show, as the old gentleman 
opposite says.] 

O, — here is that copy of verses I told 

you about. 

SPRING HAS COME. 
Intra Muros. 

The sunbeams, lost for half a year, 
Slant through my pane their morning rays 5 

For dry Northwesters cold and clear, 
The East blows in its thin blue haze. 

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, 
Then close against the sheltering wall 

The tulip's horn of dusky green, 
The peony's dark unfolding ball. 



240 THE AUTOCRAT 

The golden-chaliced crocus burns ; 

The long narcissus-blades appear j 
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, 

And lights her blue-flamed chandelier. 

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung 
By the wild winds of gusty March, 

With sallow leaflets lightly strung, 
Are swaying by the tufted larch. 

The elms have robed their slender spray 
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf } 

Wide o'er the clasping arch of day 
Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. 

[See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, 

That flames in glory for an hour, — 

Behold it withering, — then look up, — 
How meek the forest-monarch's flower ! — 

When wake the violets. Winter dies 5 
When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near *, 

When lilacs blossom. Summer cries, 
" Bud, little roses ! Spring is here ! "] 

The windows blush with fresh bouquets. 
Cut with the May-dew on their lips •, 

The radish all its bloom displays, 
Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. 

Nor less the flood of light that showers 
On beauty's changed corolla-shades, — 

The walks are gay as bridal bowers 
With rows of many-petalled maids. 

The scarlet shell-fish click and cla^h 
In the blue barrow where they slide ; 

The horseman, proud of streak and splash, 
Creeps homeward from his morning ride. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 241 

Here comes the dealer's awkward string, 
With neck in rope and tail in knot, — 

Rough colts, with careless country-swing, 
In lazy walk or slouching trot. 

Wild filly from the mountain-side, 

Doomed to the close and chafing thills, 

Lend me thy long, untiring stride 
To seek with thee thy western hills ! 

I hear the whispering voice of Spring, 

The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry. 
Like some poor bird with prisoned wing 

That sits and sings, but longs to fly. 

for one spot of living green, — 

One little spot where leaves can grow, — 

To love unblamed, to walk unseen. 
To dream above, to sleep below J 



16 




242 



THE AUTOCRAT 




IX. 



QUI estd encerrada el alma del Ucenciado 

Pedro Garcias. 

If I should ever make a little book 

out of these papers, which I hope you 
are not getting tired of, I suppose I ought to save 
the above sentence for a motto on the title-page. 
But I want it now, and must nse it. I need not 
say to you that the words are Spanish, nor that 
they are to be found in the short Introduction 
to " Gil Bias,'' nor that they mean, " Here lies 
buried the soul of the licentiate Pedro Garci.as.'' 

I warned all young people off the premises 
when I began my notes referring to old age. I 
must be equally fair with old people now. They 
are earnestly requested to leave this paper to 
young persons from the age of twelve to that of 
fourscore years and ten, at which latter period 
of life I am sure that I shall have at least one 
youthful reader. You know w^ell enough what I 
mean by youth and age ; — something in the soul, 
which has no more to do with the color of the 
hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do 
with the grass a thousand feet above it. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 243 

I am growing bolder as I write. I think it 
requires not only youth, but genius, to read this 
paper. I don't mean to imply that it required 
any whatsoever to talk what I have here written 
down. It did demand a certain amount of mem- 
ory, and such command of the English tongue 
as is given by a common school education. So 
much I do claim. But here I have related, at 
length, a string of trivialities. You must have 
the imagination of a poet to transfigure them. 
These little colored patches are stains upon the 
windows of a human soul ; stand on the outside, 
they are but dull and meaningless spots of color ; 
seen from within, they are glorified shapes with 
empurpled wings and sunbright aureoles. 

My hand trembles when I offer you this. 
Many times I have come bearing flowers such as 
my garden grew ; but now I offer you this poor, 
brown, homely growth, you may cast it aw^ay as 
worthless. And yet — and yet — it is something 
better than flowers ; it is a seed-capsule. Many a 
gardener will cut you a bouquet of his choicest 
blossoms for small fee, but he does not love to let 
the seeds of his rarest varieties go out of his own 
hands. 

It is by little things that we know ourselves ; a 
soul would very probably mistake itself for an- 
other, when once disembodied, were it not for 
individual experiences which differ from those of 



244 '^HE AUTOCRAT 

others only in details seemingly trifling. All of 
us have been thirsty thousands of times, and felt, 
with Pindar, that water was the best of things. 
I alone, as I think, of all mankind, remember one 
particular pailful of water, flavored with the white- 
pine of which the pail was made, and the brown 
mug out of which one Edmund, a red-faced and 
curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a 
fragment in his haste to drink ; it being then high 
summer, and little full-blooded boys feeling very 
warm and porous in the low-" studded '' school- 
room where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled 
over young children, many of whom are old 
ghosts now, and have known Abraham for twenty 
or thirty years of our mortal time. 

Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in all 
ages ; but that white-pine pail, and that brown 
mug belong to me in particular ; and just so of 
my special relationships with other things and 
with my race. One could never remember him- 
self in eternity by the mere fact of having loved 
or hated any more than by that of having thirsted ; 
love and hate have no more individuality in them 
than single waves in the ocean ; — but the acci- 
dents or trivial marks which distinguished those 
whom we loved or hated make their memory our 
own forever, and with it that of our own person- 
ality also. 

Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 245 

or thereabouts, pause at the threshold of this par- 
ticuLir record, and ask yourself seriously whether 
you are fit to read such revelations as are to fol- 
low. For observe, you have here no splendid ar- 
ray of petals such as poets offer you, — nothing 
but a dry shell, containing, if you will get out 
what is in it, a few small seeds of poems. You 
may laugh at them, if you like. I shall never tell 
you what I think of you for so doing. But if 
you can read into the heart of these things, in the 
light of other memories as slight, yet as dear to 
your soul, then you are neither more nor less than 
a Poet, and can afford to write no more verses 
during the rest of your natural life, — which ab- 
stinence I take to be one of the surest marks of 
your meriting the divine name I have just be- 
stowed upon you. 

May I beg of you who have begun this paper, 
nobly trusting to your own imagination and sensi- 
bilities to give it the significance which it does not 
lay claim to without your kind assistance, — may 
I beg of you, I say, to pay particular attention to 
the brackets which enclose certain paragraphs ? I 
want my " asides," you see, to whisper loud to 
you who read my notes, and sometimes I talk a 
page or two to you without pretending that I said 
a word of it to our boarders. You will find a 
very long " aside '^ to you almost as soon as you 
begin to read. And so, dear young friend, fall to 



246 THE AUTOCRAT 

at once, taking such things as I have provided for 
you ; and if you turn them, by the aid of your 
powerful imagination, into a fair banquet, why, 
then, peace be with you, and a summer by the 
.still waters of some quiet river, or by some yellow 
beach, where, as my friend the Professor, says, 
you can sit with Nature's wrist in your hand and 
count her ocean-pulses.] 

I should like to make a few intimate revelations 
relating especially to my early life, if I thought 
you would like to hear them. 

[The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, ^ 
and sat with her face directed partly towards me. 
— Half-mourning now ; — purple ribbon. That 
breastpin she wears has gray hair in it ; her moth- 
er's, no doubt; — I remember our landlady's 
daughter telling me, soon after the schoolmis- 
tress came to board with us, that she had lately 
^' buried a payrent." That 's what made her look 
so pale, — kept the poor dying thing alive with 
her own blood. Ah ! long illness is the real vam- 
pyrism ; think of living a year or two after one is 
dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail young 
creature at one's bedside ! Well, souls grow white, 
as well as cheeks, in these holy duties ; one that 
goes in a nurse, may come out an angel. — God 
bless all good women ! — to their soft hands and 

pitying hearts we must all come at last ! The 

schoolmistress has a better color than when she 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 247 

came. Too late ! <* It might have been.'* 

Amen ! 

How many thoughts go to a dozen heart- 



beats, sometimes ! There was no long pause after 
my remark addressed to the company, but in that 
time I had the train of ideas and feelings I have 
just given flash through my consciousness sudden 
and sharp as the crooked red streak that springs 
out of its black sheath like the creese of a Malay 
in his death-race, and stabs the earth right and left 
in its blind rage. 

I don't deny that there was a pang in it, — 
yes, a stab ; but there was a prayer, too, — the 
" Amen " belonged to that. — Also, a vision of 
a four-story brick house, nicely furnished, — I ac- 
tually saw many specific articles, — curtains, sofas, 
tables, and others, and could draw the patterns of 
them at this moment, — a brick house, I say, look- 
ing out on the water, with a fair parlor, and books 
and busts and pots of flowers and bird-cages, all 
complete ; and at the window, looking on the wa- 
ter, two of us. — '^ Male and female created He 
them." — These two were standing at the window, 
when a smaller shape that was playing near them 

looked up at me with such a look that I 

poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, 
and then continued.] 

I said I should like to tell you some things, such 
as people commonly never tell, about my early rec- 
ollections. Should you like to hear them ? 



248 THE AUTOCRAT 

Should we like to hear them ? — said the school- 
mistress ; — no, but we should love to. 

[The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had 
something very pleasant in its tone, just then. — 
The four-story brick house, which had gone out 
like a transparency when the light behind it is 
quenched, glimmered again for a moment ; parlor, 
books, busts, flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete, 
— and the figures as before.] 

We are waiting with eagerness, sir, — said the 
divinity-student. 

[The transparency went out as if a flash of black 
lightning had struck it.] 

If you want to hear my confessions, the next 
thing — I said — is to know whether I can trust 
you with them. It is only fair to say that there 
arc a great many people in the world that laugh 
at such things. / think they are fools, but per- 
haps you don't all agree with me. 

Here are children of tender age talked to as if 
they were capable of understanding Calvin's " In- 
stitutes," and nobody has honesty or sense enough 
to tell the plain truth about the little wretches : 
that they are as superstitious as naked savages, 
and such miserable spiritual cowards — that is, if 
they have any imagination — that they will believe 
anything which is taught them, and a great deal 
more which they teach themselves. 

I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 249 

times, among books and those ^vho knew what was 
in books. I was carefully instructed in things 
temporal and spiritual. But np to a considerable 
maturity of childhood I believed Eaphael and Mi- 
chael Angelo to have been superhuman beings. 
The central doctrine of the prevalent religious 
fiiith of Christendom was utterly confused and neu- 
tralized in my mind for years by one of tliose too 
common stories of actual life, which I overheard 
repeatod in a whisper. — Why did I not ask ? you 
will say. — You don't remember the rosy pudency 
of sensitive children. The first instinctive move- 
ment of the little creatures is to make a cache, and 
bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes, and ter- 
rors. I am uncovering one of these caches. Do 
you think I was necessarily a greater fool and 
coward than another 1 

I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. 
The masts looked frightfully tall, — but they were 
not so tall as the steeple of our old yellow meet- 
ing-house. At any rate I used to hide my eyes 
from the sloops and schooners that were wont to 
lie at the end of the bridge, and I confess that 
traces of this undefined terror lasted very long. — 
One other source of alarm had a still more fearful 
significance. There was a great wooden hand, — 
a glove-maker's sign, which used to swing and creak 
in the blast, as it hung from a pillar before a cer- 
tain shop a mile or two outside of the city. Oh, 



250 THE AUTOCRAT 

the dreadful hand ! Always hanging there ready 
to catch up a little boy, who would come home to 
supper no more, nor yet to bed, — whose porringer 
would be laid away empty thenceforth, and his 
half-worn shoes wait until his small brother grew 
to fit them. 

As for all manner of superstitious observances, 
I used once to think I must have been peculiar in 
having such a list of them, but I now believe that 
half the children of the same age go through the 
same experiences. No Roman soothsayer ever had 
such a catalogue of omens as I found in the Sibyl- 
line leaves of my childhood. That trick of throw- 
ing a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty 
issue to hitting or missing, Avhich you will find 
mentioned in one or more biographies, I well re- 
member. Stepping on or over certain particular 
things or spots, — Dr. Johnson^s especial weak- 
ness, — I got the habit of at a very early age. — I 
won't swear that I have not some tendency to 
these not wise practices even at this present date. 
[How many of you that read these notes can say 
the same thing ! ] 

With these follies mingled sweet delusions, 
which I loved so well I would not outgrow them, 
even when it required a voluntary effort to put a 
momentary trust in them. Here is one which I 
cannot help telling you. 

The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 251 

is easily heard at the place where I was born and 
lived. ^' There is a ship of war come in," they 
used to say, when they heard them. Of course, I 
supposed that such vessels came in unexpectedly, 
after indefinite years of absence, — suddenly as 
falling stones ; and that the great guns roared in 
their astonishment and delight at the sight of the 
old war-ship splitting the bay with her cutwater. 
Now, the sloop-of-war the Wasp, Captain Blakely, 
after gloriously capturing the Reindeer and the 
Avon, had disappeared from the face of the ocean, 
and was supposed to be lost. But there was no 
proof of it, and, of course, for a time, hopes were 
entertained that she might be heard from. Long 
after the last real chance had utterly vanished, I 
pleased myself with the fond illusion that some- 
where on the waste of waters she was still floating, 
and there were years during which I never heard 
the sound of the great guns booming inland from 
the Navy-yard without saying to myself, '< The 
AYasp has come ! " and almost thinking I could 
see her, as she rolled in, crumpling the water be- 
fore her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered 
spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the 
shouts and tears of thousands. This was one of 
those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let 
me make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, 
so late as to have outgrown childhood, perhaps to 
have got far on towards manhood, when the roar 



252 THE AUTOCRAT 

<5f the cannon has struck suddenly on my ear, I 
have started with a thrill of vague expectation and 
tremulous delight, and the long-unspoken v^^ords 
have articulated themselves in the mind's dumb 
whisper. The Wasp has come ! 

Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. 

I suppose all of you have' had the pocket-book fe- 
ver when you were little 1 — What do I mean ? 
Why, ripping up old pocket-books in the firm be- 
lief that bank-bills to an 'immense amount were 
hidden in them. — So, too, you must all remem- 
ber some splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody 
or other, which fed you with hopes perhaps for 
years, and which left a blank in your life which 
nothing has ever filled up. — 0. T. quitted our 
household, carrying with him the passionate re- 
grets of the more youthful members. He was an 
ingenious youngster ; wrote wonderful copies, and 
carved the two initials given above with great skill 
on all available surfaces. I thought, by the way, 
they were all gone; but the other day I found 
them on a certain door which I will show you 
some time. How it surprised me to find them so 
near the ground ! I had thought the boy of no 
trivial dimensions. Well, O. T., when he went, 
made a solemn promise to two of us. I was to 
have a ship, and the other a mar^m-house (last 
syllable pronounced as in the word tin). Neither 
ever came ; but, how many and many a time I 



OF THE BREAKSIfSr-TABLE 253 

have stolen to the corner, — the cars pass close 
by it at this time, — and looked up that long 
avenue, thinking that he must be coming now al- 
most sure, as I turned to look northward, that 
there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship 
in one hand and the mar^m-house in the other ! 

[You must not suppose that all I am going to 
say, as well as all I have said, was told to the 
whole company. The young fellow whom they 
call John was in the yard, sitting on a barrel and 
smoking a^ cheroot, the fumes of which came in, not 
ungrateful, through the open window. The divin- 
ity-student disappeared in the midst of our talk. 
The poor relation in black bombazine, who looked 
and moved as if all her articulations were elbow- 
joints, had gone off to her chamber, after waiting 
with a look of soul-subduing decorum at the foot 
of the stairs until one of the male sort had passed 
her and ascended into the upper regions. This is 
a famous point of etiquette in our boarding-house ; 
in fact, between ourselves, they make such an aw- 
ful fuss about it, that I, for one, had a great deal 
rather have them simple enough not to think of 
such matters at all. Our landlady's daughter 
said, the other evening, that she was going to 
" retire " ; whereupon the young fellow called 
John took up a lamp and insisted on lighting her 
to the foot of the staircase. Nothing would induce 
her to pass by him, until the schoolmistress, say- 



254 THE AUTOCRAT 

ing in good plain English that it was her bedtime, 
walked straight by them both, and not seeming to 
trouble herself about either of them. 

I have been led away from what I meant the 
portion included in these brackets to inform my 
readers about. I say, then, most of the boarders 
had left the table about the time when I began 
telling some of these secrets of mine, — all of them, 
in fact, but the old gentleman opposite and the 
schoolmistress. I understand why a young woman 
should like to hear these simple but genuine ex- 
periences of early life, which are, as I have said, 
the little brown seeds of what may yet grow to be 
poems with leaves of azure and gold; but when 
the old gentleman pushed up his chair nearer to 
me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, 
when I was speaking of some trifling, tender rem- 
iniscence, drew a long breath, with such a tremor 
in it that a little more and it would have been a 
sob, why, then I felt there must be something of 
nature in them which redeemed their seeming in- 
significance. Tell me, man or woman with whom 
I am whispering, have you not a small store of 
recollections, such as these I am uncovering, bur- 
ied beneath the dead leaves of many summers, per- 
haps under the unmelting snows of fast-returning 
winters, — a few such recollections, which, if you 
should write them all out, would be swept into 
some careless editor's drawer, and might cost a 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 255 

scanty half-hour's lazy reading to his subscribers, 
— and yet, if Death should cheat you of them, you 
would not know yourself in eternity ?] 

1 made three acquaintances at a very ear- 
ly period of life, my introduction to whom was 
never forgotten. The first unequivocal act of 
wrong that has left its trace in my memory was 
this ; refusing a small favor asked of me, — noth- 
ing more than telling what had happened at school 
one morning. No matter who asked it ; but there 
were circumstances which saddened and awed me. 
I had no heart to speak ; — I faltered some miser- 
able, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, and the 
first battle of life was lost. What remorse fol- 
lowed I need not tell. Then and there, to the 
best of my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin 
by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time 
has led me to look upon my offence niore lenient- 
ly ; I do not believe it or any other childish wrong 
is infinite, as some have pretended, but infinitely 
finite. Yet, if I had but Avon that battle ! 

The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it 
was that had silenced me, came near me, — but 
never, so as to be distinctly seen and remembered, 
during my tender years. There flits dimly before 
me the image of a little girl, whose name even I 
have forgotten, a schoolmate whom we missed one 
day, and were told that she had died. But what 
death was I never had any very distinct idea, un- 



256 THE AUTOCRAT 

til- one day I climbed the low stone wall of the old 
burial-ground and mingled with a group that were 
looking into a very deep, long, narrow hole, dug 
down through the green sod, down through the 
brown loam, down through the yellow gravel, and 
there at the bottom was an oblong red box, and a 
still, sharp, white face of a young man seen through 
an opening at one end of it. When the lid was 
closed, and the gravel and stones rattled down pell- 
mell, and the woman in black, who was crying 
and wringing her hands, went off with the other 
mourners, and left him, then I felt that I had seen 
Death, and should never forget him. 

One other acquaintance I made at an earlier pe- 
riod of life than the habit of romancers authorizes, 
— Love, of course. — She was a famous beauty 
afterwards. — I am satisfied that many children 
rehearse their parts in the drama of life before they 
have shed all their milk-teeth. — I think I won't 
tell the story of the golden blonde. — I suppose 
everybody has had his childish fancies ; but some- 
times they are passionate impulses, which antici- 
pate all the tremulous emotions belonging to a 
later period. Most children remember seeing and 
adoring an angel before they were a dozen years 
old. 

[The old gentleman had left his chair opposite 
and taken a seat by the schoolmistress and myself, 
a little way from the table. — It 's true, it 's true, 



OF THE BREAKJWST-TABLE. 257 

said the old gentleman. — He took hold of a steel 
watch-chain, which carried a large, square gold 
key at one end and was supposed to have some' 
kind of timekeeper at the other. With some 
trouble he dragged up an ancient-looking, thick, 
silver, bull's-eye watch. He looked at it for a 
moment, — hesitated, — touched the inner corner 
of his right eye with the pulp of his middle finger, 

— looked at the face of the watch, — said it was 
getting into the forenoon, — then opened the watch 
and handed me the loose outside case without a 
word. — The watch-paper had been pink once, and 
had a faint tinge still, as if all its tender life had 
not yet quite faded out. Two little birds, a flower, 
and, in small school-girl letters, a date, — 17 . . 

— no matter. — Before I was thirteen years old, — 

said the old gentleman. 1 don't know what 

was in that young schoolmistress's head, nor why 
she should have done it ; but she took out the 
watch-paper and put it softly to her lips, as if she 
were kissing the poor tiling that made it so long 
ago. The old gentleman took the watch-paper care- 
fully from her, replaced it, turned away and walked 
out, holding the watch in his hand. I saw him pass 
the window a moment after with that foolish white 
hat on his head ; he could n't have been thinking 
what he was about when he put it on. So the 
schoolmistress and I were left alone. I drew my 
chair a shade nearer to her, and continued.] 

17 



258 THE AUTOCRAT 

And since I am talking of early recollections, I 
don't know why I should n't mention some others 
that still cling to me, — not that you will attach 
any very particular meaning to these same images 
so full of significance to me, but that you will find 
something parallel to them in your own memory. 
You remember, perhaps, what I said one day 
about smells. There were certain sounds also 
which had a mysterious suggestiveness to me, 
— not so intense, perhaps, as that connected with 
the other sense^ but yet «j)eculiar, and never to be 
forgotten. 

The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, 
bringing their loads of oak and walnut from the 
country, as the slow-swinging oxen trailed them 
along over the complaining snow, in the cold, 
brown light of early morning. Lying in bed and 
listening to their dreary music had a pleasure in it 
akin to the Lucretian luxury, or that which Byron 
speaks of as to be enjoyed in looking on at a 
battle by one '^ who hath no friend, no brother 
there." 

There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and 
so connected with one of those simple and curious 
superstitions of childhood of which I have spoken, 
that I can never cease to cherish a sad sort of 
love for it. — Let me tell the superstitious fancy 
first. The Puritan " Sabbath,'' as everybody 
knows, began at " sundown " on Saturday even- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 259 

ing. To such observance of it I was born and 
bred. As the hirge, round disk of day declined, a 
stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy 
hush came over us all. It was time for work to 
cease, and for playthings to be put away. The 
world of active life passed into the shadow of an 
eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should sink 
again beneath the horizon. 

It was in this stillness of tj^e world without and 
of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the 
evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly 
heard, — so that I well remember I used to think 
that the purring of these little creatures, which 
mingled with the batrachian hymns from the 
neighboring swamp, was peculiar to Saturday 
evenings. I don't know that anything could give 
a clearer idea of the quieting and subduing effect 
of the old habit of observance of what was consid- 
ered holy time, than this strange, childish fancy. 

Yes, and there was still another sound which 
mingled its solemn cadences with the waking and 
sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was heard 
only at times, — a deep, muffled roar, which rose 
and fell, not loud, but vast, — a whistling boy 
would have drowned it for his next neighbor, but 
it must have been heard over the space of a hun- 
dred square miles. I used to wonder what this 
might be. Could it be the roar of the thousand 
wheels and the ten thousand footsteps jarring and 



26o THE AUTOCRAT 

trampling along the stones of the neighboring city ? 
That would be continuous ; but this, as I have 
said, rose and fell in regular rhythm. I remem- 
ber being told, and I suppose this to have been 
the true solution, that it was the sound of the 
waves, after a high wind, breaking on the long 
beaches many miles distant. I should really like 
to know whether any observing people living ten 
miles, more or less, inland from long beaches, — 
in such a town, for instance, as Cantabridge, in 
the eastern part of the Territory of the Massachu- 
setts, — have ever observed any such sound, and 
whether it was rightly accounted for as above. 

Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the 
low murmur of memory, are the echoes of certain 
voices I have heard at rare intervals. I grieve to 
say it, but our people, I think, have not generally 
agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with 
skins that shed water like the backs of ducks, with 
smooth surfaces neatly padded beneath, and velvet 
linings to their singing pipes, are not so common 
among us as that other pattern of humanity with 
angular outlines and plane surfaces, arid integu- 
ments, hair like the fibrous covering of a cocoa-nut 
in gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices 
at once thin and strenuous, — acidulous enough 
to produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridu- 
lous enough to sing duets with the katydids. I 
think our conversational soprano, as sometimes 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 261 

overheard in the cars, arising from a group of 
young persons, who may have taken the train at 
one of our great industrial centres, for instance, — 
young persons of the female sex, we will say, who 
have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in loud stri- 
dent speech, and who, after free discussion, have 
fixed on two or more double seats, which having 
secured, they proceed to eat apples and hand 
round daguerrotypes, — I say, I think the con- 
versational soprano, heard under these circum- 
stances, would not be among the allurements the 
old Enemy would put in requisition, were he get- 
ting up a new temptation of St. Anthony. 

There are sweet voices among us, we all know, 
and voices not musical, it may be, to those who 
hear them for the first time, yet sweeter to us than 
any we shall hear until we listen to some warbling 
angel in the overture to that eternity of blissful 
harmonies we hope to enjoy. — But why should I 
tell lies ? If my friends love me, it is because I 
try to tell the truth. I never heard but two 
voices in my life that frightened me by their 
sweetness. 

Frightened you ? — said the schoolmis- 
tress. — Yes, frightened me. They made me feel 
as if there might be constituted a creature with 
such a chord in her voice to some string in an- 
other's soul, that, if she but spoke, he would leave 
all and follow her, though it were into the jaws of 



262 THE AUTOCRAT 

Erebus. Our only chance to keep our wits is, 
that there are so few natural chords between 
others' voices and this string in our souls, and 
that those which at first may have jarred a little 
by and by come into harmony with it. — But I 
tell you this is no fiction. You may call the 
story of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what 
will you say to Mario and the poor lady who fol- 
lowed him ? 

Whose were those two voices that be- 
witched me so ? — They both belonged to Ger- 
man women. One was a chambermaid, not other- 
wise fascinating. The key of my room at a cer- 
tain great hotel was missing, and this Teutonic 
maiden was summoned to give information re- 
specting it. The simple soul was evidently not 
long from her mother-land, and spoke with sweet 
uncertainty of dialect. But to hear her wonder 
and lament and suggest, with soft, liquid inflec- 
tions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of 
serious tenderness for the fate of the lost key as 
if it had been a child that had strayed from its 
mother, was so winning, that, had her features 
and figure been as delicious as her accents, — if 
she had looked like the marble Clytie, for instance, 
— why, all I can say is 

[The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, 
that I stopped short.] 

I was only going to say that I should have 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 263 

drowned myself. For Lake Erie was close by, 
and it is so much better to accept asphyxia, which 
takes only three minutes by the watch, than a 
mesalliance^ that lasts fifty years to begin with, and 
then passes along down the line of descent, (break- 
ing out in all manner of boorish manifestations of 
feature and manner, which, if men were only as 
short-lived as horses, could be readily traced back 
through the square-roots and the cube-roots of the 
family stem on which you have hung the armorial 
bearings of the De Champignons or the De la 
Morues, until one came to beings that ate with 
knives and said '' Haow V) that no person of right 
feeling could have hesitated for a single moment. 

The second of the ravishing voices I have heard 
was, as I have said, that of another German wo- 
man. — I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying 
that such a voice could not have come from any 
Americanized human being. 

What was there in it ? — said the school- 
mistress, — and, upon my word, her tones were so 
very musical, that I almost wished I had said three 
voices instead of two, and not made the unpatri- 
otic remark above reported. — 0, I said, it had so 
much woman in it, — midiebrity, as well 2iS femineity ; 
— no self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces 
into every word and movement; large, vigorous 
nature, running back to those huge-limbed Ger- 
mans of Tacitus, but subdued by the reverential 



264 ^^^ AUTOCRAT 

training and tuned by the kindly culture of fifty 
generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil, 
independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not 
the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear 
noble voices among us, — I have known families 
famous for them, — but ask the first person you 
meet a question, and ten to one there is a hard, 
sharp, metallic, matter-of-business clink in the ac- 
cents of the answer, that produces the effect of 
one of those bells which small tradespeople con- 
nect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon 
your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, that 
your first impulse is to retire at once from the 
precincts. 

Ah, but I must not forget that dear little 

child I saw and heard in a French hospital. Be- 
tween two and three years old. Fell out of her 
chair and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in 
bed, patient, gentle. Rough students round her, 
some in white aprons, looking fearfully business- 
like ; but the child placid, perfectly still. I spoke 
to her, and the blessed little creature answered me 
in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that 
reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the 
thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this moment, 
while I am writing, so many, many years after- 
wards. — C'est tout comme un serin, said the French 
student at my side. 

These are the voices which struck the key-note 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 265 

of my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to 
hear in heaven will be, if we shall enter through 
one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be 
other things besides aerolites that wander from 
their own spheres to ours ; and when we speak of 
celestiiil sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer 
the literal truth than we dream. If mankind gen- 
erally are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre- 
Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift in these little open 
boats of humanity to make one more trial to reach 
the shore, — as some grave theologians have main- 
tained, — if, in plain English, men are the ghosts 
of dead devils who have <* died into life,^^ (to bor- 
row an expression from Keats,) and walk the 
earth in a suit of living rags which lasts three 
or four score summers, — why, there must have 
been a few good spirits sent to keep them compa- 
ny, and these sweet voices I speak of must belong 
to them. 

1 wish you could once hear my sister's 

voice, — said the schoolmistress. 

If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one, — 
said I. 

I never thought mine was anything, — said the 
schoolmistress. 

How should you know ? — said I. — People 
never hear their own voices, — any more than they 
see their own faces. There is not even a looking- 
glass for the voice. Of course, there is something 



266 THE AUTOCRAT 

audible to us when we speak ; but that something 
is not our own voice as it is known to all our ac- 
quaintances. I think, if an image spoke to us in 
our own tones, we should not know them in the 
least. — How pleasant it would be, if in another 
state of being we could have shapes like our own 
former selves for playthings, — we standing out- 
side or inside of them, as we liked, and they being 
to us just what we used to be to others ! 

I wonder if there will be nothing like what 

we call "play," after our earthly toys are broken, 
— said the schoolmistress. 

Hush, — said I, — what will the divinity-student 
say? 

[I thought she was hit, that time ; — but the 
shot must have gone over her, or on one side of 
her ; she did not flinch.] 

O, — said the schoolmistress, — he must look 
out for my sister's heresies ; I am afraid he will 
be too busy with them to take care of mine. 

Do you mean to say, — said I, — that it is your 
sister whom that student 

[The young fellow commonly known as John, 
who had been sitting on the barrel, smoking, 
jumped off just then, kicked over the barrel, gave 
it a push with his foot that set it rolling, and 
stuck his saucy-looking face in at the window so 
as to cut my question off in the middle ; and the 
schoolmistress leaving the room a few minutes 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 267 

afterwards, I did not have a chance to finish 
it. 

The young fellow came in and sat down in a 
chair, putting his heels on the top of another. 

Pooty girl, — said he. 

A fine young lady, — I replied. 

Keeps a fust-rate school, according to accounts, 
~ — said he, — teaches all sorts of things, — Latin 
and Italian and music. Folks rich once, — smashed 
up. She went right ahead as smart as if she 'd 
been born to work. That ^s the kind o' girl I go 
for. I 'd marry her, only two or three other girls 
would drown themselves if I did. 

I think the above is the longest speech of this 
young fellow's which I have put on record. I do 
not like to change his peculiar expressions, for this 
is one of those cases in which the style is the man, 
as M. de Bufibn says. The fact is, the young fel- 
low is a good-hearted creature enough, only too 
fond of his jokes, — and if it were not for those 
heat-lightning winks on one side of his face, I 
should not mind his fun much.] 

[Some days after this, when the company were 
together again, I talked a little.] 

1 don't think I have a genuine hatred for 

anybody. I am well aware that I differ herein 
from the sturdy English moralist and the stout 
American tragedian. I don't deny that I hate the 



268 THE AUTOCRAT 

sight of certain people ; but the qualities which 
make me tend to hate the man himself are such 
as I am so much disposed to pity, that, except 
under immediate aggravation, I feel kindly enough 
to the worst of them. It is such a sad thing to 
be born a sneaking fellow, so much worse than to 
inherit a hump-back or a couple of club-feet, that 
I sometimes feel as if we ought to love the crip- 
pled souls, if I may use this expression, with a 
certain tenderness which we need not waste on 
noble natures. One who is born with such con- 
genital incapacity that nothing can make a gentle- 
man of him is entitled, not to our wrath, but to 
our profoundest sympathy. But as we cannot 
help hating the sight of these people, just as we 
do that of physical deformities, we gradually elim- 
inate them from our society, — we love them, but 
open the window and let them go. By the time 
decent people reach middle age they have weeded 
their circle pretty well of these unfortunates, un- 
less they have a taste for such animals ; in which 
case, no matter what their position may be, there 
is something, you may be sure, in their natures 
akin to that of their wretched parasites. 

— — The divinity-student wished to know what 
I thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies ; 
did I believe in love at first sight ? 

Sir, — said I, — all men love all women. That 
is the prima-fade aspect of the case. The Court 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 269 

of Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do 
so ; and the individual man is bound to show 
cause why he does not love any particular woman. 
A man, says one of my old black-letter law-books, 
may show divers good reasons, as thus : He hath 
not seen the person named in the indictment; she 
is of tender age, or the reverse of that ; she hath 
certain personal disqualifications, — as, for instance, 
she is a blackamoor, or hath an ill-favored counte- 
nance ; or, his capacity of loving being limited, his 
affections are engrossed by a previous comer ; and 
so of other conditions. Not the less is it true that 
he is bound by duty and inclined by nature to love 
each and every woman. Therefore it is that each 
woman virtually summons every man to show 
cause why he doth not love her. This is not by 
written document, or direct speech, for the most 
part, but by certain signs of silk, gold, and other 
materials, which say to all men, — Look on me 
and love, as in duty bound. Then the man plead- 
eth his special incapacity, whatsoever that may be, 
— as, for instance, impecuniosity, or that he hath 
one or many wives in his household, or that he is 
of mean figure, or small capacity; of which rea- 
sons, it may be noted, that the first is, according 
to late decisions, of chiefest authority. — So far 
the old- law-book. But there is a note from an 
older authority, saying that every woman doth 
also love each and every man, except there be 



270 THE AUTOCRAT 

some good reason to the contrary ; and a very ob- 
serving friend of mine, a young unmarried clergy- 
man, tells me, that, so far as his experience goes, 
he has reason to think the ancient author had fact 
to justify his statement. 

I '11 tell you how it is with the pictures of 
women we fall in love with at first sight. 

We ain't talking about pictures, — said 

the landlady's daughter, — we're talking about 
women. 

I understood that we were speaking of love at 
sight, — I remarked, mildly. — Now, as all a man 
knows about a woman whom he looks at is just 
what a picture as big as a copper, or a " nickel," 
rather, at the bottom of his eye can teach him, I 
think I am right in saying we are talking about 
the pictures of woriien. — Well, now, the reason 
why a man is not desperately in love with ten 
thousand women at once is just that which pre- 
vents all our portraits being distinctly seen upon 
that wall. They all are painted there by reflec- 
tion from our faces, but because all of them are 
painted on each spot, and each on the same sur- 
face, and many other objects at the same time, no 
one is seen as a picture. But darken a chamber 
and let a single pencil of rays in through a key- 
hole, then you have a picture on the wall. We 
never fall in love with a woman in distinction 
from women, until we can get an image of her 



OF THE BREAKFAST'TABLE. 271 

through a pin-hole ; and then we can see nothing 
else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image 
in our mental camera-obscura. 

My friend, the Poet, tells me he has 

to leave town whenever the anniversaries come 
round. 

What's the difficulty ? — Why, they all want 
him to get up and make speeches, or songs, or 
toasts ; which is just the very thing he does n't 
want to do. He is an old story, he says, and 
hates to show on these occasions. But they tease 
him, and coax him, and can't do without him, 
and feel all over his poor weak head until they 
get their fingers on the fontanelle, (the Professor 
will tell you what this means, — he says the one 
at the top of the head always remains open in 
poets,) until, by gentle pressure on that soft pul- 
sating spot, they stupefy him to the point of 
acquiescence. 

There are times, though, he says, when it is a 
pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, 
to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a 
handful of what grows there, — weeds and violets 
together, — not cutting them off, but pulling them 
up by the roots with the brown earth they grow 
in sticking to them. That 's his idea of a post- 
prandial performance. Look here, now. These 
verses I am going to read you, he tells me, were 
pulled up by the roots just in that way, the 



272 THE AUTOCRAT 

other day. — Beautiful entertainment, — names 
there on the plates that flow from all English- 
speaking tongues as familiarly as and or the ; 
entertainers known wherever good poetry and 
fair title-pages are held in esteem ; guest a kind- 
hearted, modest, genial, hopeful poet, who sings 
to the hearts of his countrymen, the British peo- 
ple, the songs of good cheer which the better days 
to come, as all honest souls trust and believe, will 
turn into the prose of common life. My friend, 
the Poet, says you must not read such a string of 
verses too literally. If he trimmed it nicely be- 
low, you would n't see the roots, he says, and he 
likes to keep them, and a little of the soil clinging 
to them. 

This is the farewell of my friend, the Poet, 
read to his and our friend, the Poet : — 

A GOOD TIME GOING! 

Brave singer of the coming time, 

Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, 
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, 

The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, 
Good by ! Good by ! — Our hearts and hands. 

Our lips in honest Saxon phrases. 
Cry, God be with him, till he stands 

His feet among the English daisies ! 

'T is here we part 5 — for other eyes 
The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, 

The dripping arms that plunge and rise. 
The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 273 

The kerchiefs waving from the pier, 

The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, 
The deep blue desert, lone and drear, 

With heaven above and home before him ! 

His home ! — the Western giant smiles, 

And twirls the spotty globe to find it 5 — 
This little speck the British Isles ? 

'T is but a freckle, — never mind it ! — 
He laughs, and all his prairies roll, 

Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, 
And ridges stretched from pole to pole 

Heave till they crack their iron knuckles ! 

But memory blushes at the sneer. 

And Honor turns with frown defiant, 
And Freedom, leaning on her spear. 

Laughs louder than the laughing giant : — 
"An islet is a world," she said, 

" When glory with its dust has blended, 
And Britain keeps her noble dead 

Till earth and seas and skies are rended ! " 

Beneath each swinging forest-bough 

Some arm as stout in death reposes, — 
From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow 

Her valor's life-blood runs in roses j 
Nay, let our brothers of the West 

Write smiling in their florid pages. 
One half her soil has walked the rest 

In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages ! 

Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp. 

From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, 
The British oak with rooted grasp 

Her slender handful holds together ; — 
With clififs of white and bowers of green, 

And Ocean narrowing to caress her, 
And hills and threaded streams between, — 

Our little mother isle, God bless her I 
18 



274 ^^^ AUTOCRAT 

In earth's broad temple where we stand, 

Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us, 
We hold the missal in our hand, 

Bright with the lines our Mother taught us } 
Where'er its blazoned page betrays 

The glistening links of gilded fetters, 
Behold, the half-turned leaf displays 

Her rubric stained in crimson letters ! 

Enough ! To speed a parting friend 

'T is vain alike to speak and listen 5 — 
Yet stay, — these feeble accents blend 

With rays of light from eyes that glisten. 
Good by ! once more, — and kindly tell 

In words of peace the young world's story, — 
And say, besides, — we love too well 

Our mother's soil, our father's glory ! 

When my friend, the Professor, found that my 
friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this full- 
blown style, he got a little excited, as you may 
have seen a canary, sometimes, when another 
strikes up. The Professor says he knows he can 
lecture, and thinks he can write verses. At any 
rate, he has often tried, and now he was deter- 
mined to try again. So when some professional 
friends of his called him up, one day, after a feast 
of reason and a regular " freshet ^^ of soul which 
had lasted two or three hours, he read them these 
verses. He introduced them with a few remarks, 
he told me, of which the only one he remembered 
was this : that he had rather write a single line 
which one among them should think worth re- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



275 



niembering than set them all laughing with a 
string of epigrams. It was all right, I don't 
doubt ; at any rate, that was his fancy then, and 
perhaps another time he may be obstinately hila- 
rious ; however, it may be that he is growing 
graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks and 
watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a kit- 
ten always, as the old gentleman opposite said the 
other day. 

You must listen to this seriously, for I think 
the Professor was very much in earnest when he 
wrote it. 

THE TWO ARMIES. 

As Life's unending column pours, 
Two marshalled hosts are seen, — 

Two armies on the trampled shores 
That Death flows black between. 

One marches to the drum-beat's roll, 
The wide-mouthed clarion's bray, 

And bears upon a crimson scroll, 
" Our glory is to slay." 

One moves in silence by the stream, 

With sad, yet watchful eyes, 
Calm as the patient planet's gleam 

That walks the clouded skies. 

Along its front no sabres shine. 

No blood-red pennons wave ; 
Its banners bear the single line, 

" Our duty is to save." 



276 THE AUTOCRAT 

For those no death-bed's lingering shade ; 

At Honor's trumpet-call 
With knitted brow and lifted blade 

In Glory's arms they fall. 

For these no clashing falchions bright, 

No stirring battle-cry *, 
The bloodless stabber calls by night, — 

Each answers, " Here am I ! " 

For those the sculptor's laurelled bust, 

The builder's marble piles, 
The anthems pealing o'er their dust 

Through long cathedral aisles. 

For these the blossom-sprinkled turf 
That floods the lonely graves. 

When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf 
In flowery-foaming waves. 

Two paths lead upward from below. 

And angels wait above, 
Who count each burning life-drop's flow, 

Each falling tear of Love. 

Though from the Hero's bleeding breast 

Her pulses Freedom drew, 
Though the white lilies in her crest 

Sprang from that scarlet dew, — 

While Valor's haughty champions wait 
Till all their scars are shown, 

Love walks unchallenged through the gate, 
To sit beside the Throne ! 



-c$)oa> 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



277 




HE schoolmistress came down with a 

rose in her hair, — a fresh June rose. 

She has been walking early ; she has 

brought back two others, — one on 

each cheek, 

I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I 
could muster for the occasion. Those two blush- 
roses I just spoke of turned into a couple of dam- 
asks. I suppose all this went through my mind, 
for this was what I went on to say : — ] 

I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers 
our mothers and sisters used to love and cherish, 
those which grow beneath our eaves and by our 
doorstep, are the ones we always love best. If the 
Houyhnhnms should ever catch me, and, finding 
me particularly vicious and unmanageable, send a 
man-tamer to Kareyfy me, I '11 tell you what drugs 
he would have to take and how he would have to 
use them. Imagine yourself reading a number of 
the Houyhnhnm Gazette, giving an account of 
such an experiment. 

" MAN-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY. 

'* The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently cap- 
tured was subjected to the art of our distinguished 



278 THE AUTOCRAT 

man-tamer in presence of a numerous assembly. 
The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely 
confined by straps to prevent his sudden and dan- 
gerous tricks of shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. 
His countenance expressed the utmost degree of 
ferocity and cunning. 

" The operator took a handful of budding lilac- 
leaves^ and crushing them slightly between his 
hoofs, so as to bring out their peculiar fragrance, 
fastened them to the end of a long pole and held 
them towards the creature. Its expression changed 
in an instant, — it drew in their fragrance eagerly, 
and attempted to seize them with its soft split 
hoofs. Having thus quieted his suspicious sub- 
ject, the operator proceeded to tie a blue hyacinth to 
the end of the pole and held it out towards the 
wild animal. The effect, was magical. Its eyes 
filled as if with rain-drops, and its lips trembled as 
it pressed them to the flower. After this it was 
perfectly quiet, and brought a measure of corn to 
the man- tamer, without showing the least disposi- 
tion to strike with the feet or hit from the 
shoulder." 

That will do for the Houyhnhnm Gazette. — 
Do you ever wonder why poets talk so much 
about flowers ? Did you ever hear of a poet who 
did not talk about them ? Don't you think a 
poem, which, for the sake of being original should 
leave them out, would be like those verses where 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 279 

the letter a or e or some other is omitted ? No, 

— they will bloom over and over again in poems 
as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always 
old and always new. AVhy should we be more 
shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired 
of blossoms or the night of stars ? Look at Na- 
ture. She never wearies of saying over her floral 
pater-noster. In the crevices of Cyclopean Avails, 

— in the dust where men lie, dust also, -^ on the 
mounds that bury huge cities, the wreck of Nin- 
eveh and the Babel-heap, — still that same sweet 
prayer and benediction. The Amen ! of Nature 
is always a flower. 

Are you tired of my trivial personalities,^- 
those splashes and streaks of sentiment, sometimes 
perhaps of sentimentality, which you may see 
when I show you my heart's corolla as if it were a 
tulip 1 Pray, do not give yourself the trouble to 
fancy me an idiot whose conceit it is to treat him- 
self as an exceptional being. It is because you 
are just like me that I talk and know that you 
will listen. We are all splashed and streaked 
with sentiments, — not with precisely the same 
tints, or in exactly the same patterns, but by the 
same hand and from the same palette. 

I don't believe any of you happen to have just 
the same passion for the blue hyacinth which I 
have, — very certainly not for the crushed lilac- 
leaf-buds ; many of you do not know how sweet 



28o THE AUTOCRAT 

they are. You love the smell of the sweet-fern 
and the bayberrj-leaves, I don't doubt ; but I 
hardly think that the last bewitches you \vith 
young memories as it does me. For the same 
reason I come back to damask roses, after having 
raised a good many of the rarer varieties. I like 
to go to operas and concerts, but there are queer 
little old homely sounds that are better than 
music to me. However, I suppose it 's foolish to 
tell such things. 

It is pleasant to be foolish at the right 

time, — said the divinity-student ; — saying it, 
however, in one of the dead languages, which I 
think are unpopular for summer-reading, and 
therefore do not bear quotation as such. 

"Well, now, — said I, -^ suppose a good, clean, 
wholesome-looking countryman's cart stops oppo- 
site my door. — Do I want any huckleberries ? — 
If I do not, there are those that do. Thereupon 
my soft-voiced handmaid bears out a large tin-pan, 
and then the wholesome countryman, heaping the 
peck-measure, spreads his broad hands around its 
lower arc to confine the wild and frisky berries, 
and so they run nimbly along the narrowing chan- 
nel until they tumble rustling down in a. black 
cascade and tinkle on the resounding metal be- 
neath. — I won't say that this rushing huckleberry 
hail-storm has not more music for me than the 
" Anvil Chorus." 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 281 

1 wonder how my great trees are coming 

on this summer. 

Where are your great trees, sir ? — said 

the divinity-student. 

O, all round about New England. I call all 
trees mine that I have put my wedding-ring on, 
and I have as many tree-wives as Brigham Young 
has human ones. 

One set ^s as green as the other, — ex- 
claimed a boarder, who has never been identified. 

They 're all Bloomers, — said the young fellow 
called John. 

[I should have rebuked this trifling with lan- 
guage, if our landlady's daughter had not asked 
me just then what I meant by putting my wed- 
ding-ring on a tree.] 

Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, 
my dear, — said I, — I have worn a tape almost 
out on the rough barks of our old New England 
elms and other big trees. — Don't you want to 
hear me talk trees a little now ? That is one of 
my specialties. 

[So they all agreed that they should like to hear 
me talk about trees.] 

I want you to understand, in the first place, that 
I have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees 
in general, and have had several romantic attach- 
ments to certain trees in particular. Now, if you 
expect me to hold forth in a '' scientific " way 



282 THE AUTOCRAT 

about my tree-loves, — to talk, for instance, of the 
XJlmus Americana, and describe the ciliated edges 
of its samara, and all that, — you are an anserine 
individual, and I must refer you to a dull friend 
who will discourse to you of such matters. What 
should you think of a lover who should describe 
the idol of his heart in the language of science, 
thus : Class, Mammalia ; Order, Primates ; Ge- 
nus, Homo ; Species, Europeus ; Variety, Brown, 
Individual, Ann Eliza ; Dental 

2 2 1 1 2 2 3 8 

Formula, i^z:T2^c ^z^P ^_^rn^—^,2.n^^o on'^ 

No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see 
them, love them, adore them in the fields, where 
they are alive, holding their gfeen sun-shades over 
our heads, talking to us with their hundred thou- 
sand whispering tongues, looking down on us with 
that sweet meekness which belongs to huge, but 
limited organisms, — which one sees in the brown 
eyes of oxen, but most in the patient posture, the 
outstretched arms, and the heavy-drooping robes 
of these vast beings endowed with life, but not with 
soul, — which outgrow us and outlive us, but stand 
helpless, — poor things ! — while Nature dresses 
and undresses them, like so many full-sized, but 
under-witted children. 

Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin ? Slowest 
of men, even of English men ; yet delicious in his 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 283 

slowness, as is the light of a sleepy eye in woman. 
I always supposed " Dr. Syntax " was written to 
make fun of him. I have a whole set of his works, 
and am very proud of it, with its gray paper, and 
open type, and long ff, and orange-juice landscapes. 
The Pere Gilpin had the kind of science I like in 
the study of Nature, — a little less observation than 
White of Selborne, but a little more poetry. — Just 
think of applying the Linnaean system to an elm ! 
Who cares how many stamens or pistils that little 
brown flower, which comes out before the leaf, 
may have to classify it by ? What we want is the 
meaning, the chariicter, the expression of a tree, as 
a kind and as an individrfeil. 

There is a mother-idea in each particular kind 
of tree, which, if well marked, is probably embod- 
ied in the poetry of every language. Take the 
oak, for instance, and we find it always standing 
as a type of strength and endurance. I wonder 
if you ever thought of the single mark of suprem- 
acy which distinguishes this tree from all our 
other forest-trees ? All the rest of them shirk the 
work of resisting gravity ; the oak alone defies it. 
It chooses the horizontal direction for its limbs, so 
that their whole weight may tell, — and then stretch- 
es them out fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain 
may be mighty enough to be worth resisting. You 
will find, that, in passing from the extreme down- 
ward droop of the branches of the weeping-willow 



284 '^HE AUTOCRAT 

to the extreme upward inclination of those of the 
poplar, they sweep nearly half a circle. At 90° the 
oak stops short ; to slant upward another degree 
would mark infirmity of purpose ; to bend down- 
wards, weakness of organization. The American 
elm betrays something of both ; yet sometimes, as 
we shall see, puts on a certain resemblance to its 
sturdier neighbor. 

It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about 
trees. There is hardly one of them which has not 
peculiar beauties in some fitting place for it. I 
remember a tall poplar of monumental proportions 
and aspect, a vast pillar of glossy green, placed on 
the summit of a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the 
country round. A native of that region saw fit to 
build his house very near it, and, having a fancy 
that it might blow down some time or other, and 
exterminate himself and any incidental relatives 
who might be " stopping '^ or " tarrying " with 
him, — also laboring under the delusion that hu- 
man life is under all circumstances to be preferred 
to vegetable existence, -;- had the great poplar cut 
down. It is so easy to say, *' It is only a poplar ! " 
and so much harder to replace its living cone than 
to build a granite obelisk ! 

I must tell you about some of my tree- wives. I 
was at one period of my life much devoted to the 
young lady population of Rhode Island, a small, 
but delightful State in the neighborhood of Paw- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 285 

tucket. The number of inhabitants being not 
very large, I had leisure, during my visits to the 
Providence Plantations, to inspect the face of the 
country in the intervals of more fascinating stud- 
ies of physiognomy. I heard some talk of a great 
elm a short distance from the locality just men- 
tioned. " Let us see the great elm,^' — I said, 
and proceeded to find it, — knowing that it was 
on a certain farm in a place called Johnston, if I 
remember rightly. I shall never forget my ride 
and my introduction to the great Johnston elm. 

I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I 
approach it for the first time. Provincialism has 
no scale of excellence in man or vegetable; it 
never knows a first-rate article of either kind when 
it has it, and is constantly taking second and third 
rate ones for Nature's best. I have often fancied 
the tree was afraid of me, and that a sort of shiver 
came over it as over a betrothed maiden when 
she first stands before the unknown to whom she 
has been plighted. Before the measuring-tape the 
proudest tree of them all quails and shrinks into 
itself. All those stories of four or five men stretch- 
ing their arms around it and not touching each 
other's fingers, of one's pacing the shadow at noon 
and making it so many hundred feet, die upon its 
leafy lips in the presence of the awful ribbon which 
has strangled so many false pretensions. 

As I rode along the pleasant way, watching ea- 



286 THE AUTOCRAT 

gerlj for the object of my journey, the rounded 
tops of the elms rose from time to time at the 
roadside. Wherever one looked taller and fuller 
than the rest, I asked myself, — " Is this it "? '* 
But as I drew nearer, they grew smaller, — or it 
proved, perhaps, that two standing in a line had 
looked like one, and so deceived me. At last, all 
at once, when I was not thinking of it, — I de- 
clare to you it makes my flesh creep when I think 
of it now, — all at once I saw a great, green cloud 
swelling in the horizon, so vast, so symmetrical, 
of such Olympian majesty and imperial suprema- 
cy among the lesser forest growths, that my heart 
stopped short, then jumped at my ribs as a hunter 
springs at a five-barred gate, and I felt all through 
me, without need of uttering the words, — " This 
is it ! " 

You will find this tree described, with many 
others, in the excellent Report upon the Trees and 
Shrubs of Massachusetts. The author has given 
my friend the Professor credit for some of his 
measurements, but measured this tree himself, 
carefully. It is a grand elm for size of trunk, 
spread of limbs, and muscular development, — 
one of the first, perhaps the first, of the first class 
of New England elms. 

The largest actual girth I have ever found at 
five feet from the ground is in the great elm lying 
a stone's throw or two north of the main road 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 287 

(if my points of compass are right) in Springfield. 
But this lias much the appearance of having been 
formed by the union of two trunks growing side 
by side. 

The West Springfield elm and one upon North- 
ampton meadows, belong also to the first class of 
trees. 

There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hat- 
field, which used to spread its claws out over a 
circumference of thirty-five feet or more before 
they covered the foot of its bole up with earth. 
This is the American elm most like an oak of any 
1 have ever seen. 

The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size 
and perfection of form. I have seen nothing that 
comes near it in Berkshire County, and few to 
compare with it anywhere. I am not sure that I 
remember any other first-class elms in New Eng- 
land, but there may be many. 

What makes a first-class elm? — Why, 

size, in the first place, and chiefly. Anything 
over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet above the 
ground, and with a spread of branches a hundred 
feet across may claim that title, according to my 
scale. All of them, with the questionable excep- 
tion of the Springfield tree above referred to, stop, 
so far as my experience goes, at about twenty-two 
or twenty-three feet of girth and a hundred and 
twenty of spread. 



288 THE AUTOCRAT 

Elms of the second class, generally ranging 
from fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively 
common. The queen of them all is that glori- 
ous tree near one of the churches in Springfield. 
Beautiful and stately she is beyond all praise. The 
"great tree" on Boston Common comes in the 
second rank, as does the one at Cohasset, which 
used to have, and probably has still, a head as round 
as an apple-tree, and that at Newburyport, with 
scores of others which might be mentioned. These 
last two have perhaps been over-celebrated. Both, 
however, are pleasing vegetables. The poor old 
Pittsfield elm lives on its past reputation. A wig of 
false leaves is indispensable to make it presentable, 

[I don't doubt there may be some monster-elm 
or other, vegetating green, but inglorious, in some 
remote New England village, which only wants a 
sacred singer to make it celebrated. Send us 
your measurements, — (certified by the postmas- 
ter, to avoid possible imposition,) — circumference 
five feet from soil, length of line from bough-end 
to bough-end, and we will see what can be done 
for you.] 

1 wish somebody would get us up the fol- 
lowing work : — 

SYLVA NOVANGLICA. 

Photographs of New England Elms and other 
Trees, taken upon the Same Scale of Magnitude. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 289 

With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished 

Literary Gentleman. Boston : & Co. 

185 . . 

The same camera should be used, — so far as 
possible, — at a fixed distance. Our friend, who 
has given us so many interesting figures in his 
" Trees of America," must not think this Pro- 
spectus invades his province ; a dozen portraits, 
with lively descriptions, would be a pretty com- 
plement to his larger work, which, so far as pub- 
lished, I find excellent. If my plan were carried 
out, and another series of a dozen English trees 
photographed on the same scale, the comparison 
would be charming. 

It has always been a favorite idea of mine to 
bring the life of the Old and the New World face 
to face, by an accurate comparison of their va- 
rious types of organization. We should begin 
with man, of course ; institute a large and exact 
comparison between the development of la pianta 
umana, as Alfieri called it, in different sections of 
each country, in the different callings, at different 
ages, estimating height, weight, force by the dyna- 
mometer and the spirometer, and finishing off with 
a series of typical photographs, giving the prin- 
cipal national physiognomies. Mr. Hutchinson 
has given us some excellent English data to begin 
with. 

Then I would follow this up by contrasting the 
19 



290 THE AUTOCRAT 

various parallel forms of life in the two continents. 
Our naturalists have often referred to this inciden- 
tally or expressly ; but the animus of Nature in 
the two half globes of the planet is so momentous 
a point of interest to our race, that it should be 
made a subject of express and elaborate study. 
Go out with me into that walk which we call the 
Mall, and look at the English and American elms. 
The American elm is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, 
and drooping as if from languor. The English 
elm is compact, robust, holds its branches up, and 
carries its leaves for weeks longer than our own 
native tree. 

Is this typical of the creative force on the two 
sides of the ocean, or not ? Nothing but a care- 
ful comparison through the whole realm of life 
can answer this question. 

There is a parallelism without identity in the 
animal and vegetable life of the two continents, 
which favors the task of comparison in an extraor- 
dinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike 
in many ways, yet not the same, both elms, yet 
easily distinguishable, just so we have a complete 
flora and a fauna, which, parting from the same 
ideal, embody it with various modifications. In- 
ventive power is the only quality of which the 
Creative Intelligence seems to be economical ; just 
as with our largest human minds, that is the di- 
vinest of faculties, and the one that most exhausts 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 291 

the mind which exercises it. As the same patterns 
have very commonly been followed, we can see 
which is worked out in the largest spirit, and de- 
termine the exact limitations under which the Cre- 
ator places the movement of life in all its manifes- 
tations in either locality. We should find ourselves 
in a very false position, if it should prove that 
Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but die out, if not 
kept up by fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox and other 
more or less wise persons have maintained. It 
may turn out the other way, as I have heard one 
of our literary celebrities argue, — and though I 
took the other side, I liked his best, — that the 
American is the Englishman reinforced. 

Will you walk out and look at those elms 

with me after breakfast '? — I said to the school- 
mistress. 

[I am not going to tell lies about it, and say 
that she blushed, — as I suppose she ought to 
have done, at such a tremendous piece of gallan- 
try as that was for our boarding-house. On the 
contrary, she turned a little pale, — but smiled 
brightly and said, — Yes, with pleasure, but she 
must walk towards her school. — She went for her 
bonnet. — The old gentleman opposite followed 
her with his eyes, and said he wished he was a 
young fellow. Presently she came down, looking 
very pretty in her half-mourning bonnet, and car- 
rying a school-book in her hand.] 



292 THE AUTOCRAT 

MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 

This is the shortest way, — she said, as we came 
to a corner. — Then we won't take it, — said I. — 
The schoolmistress laughed a little, and said she 
was ten minutes early, so she could go round. 

We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of Eng- 
lish elms. The gray squirrels were out looking 
for their breakfasts, and one of them came toward 
us in light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was 
close to the rail of the burial-ground. He was on 
a grave with a broad blue-slate-stone at its head, 
and a shrub growing on it. The stone said this 
was the grave of a young man who was the son 
of an Honorable gentleman, and who died a hun- 
dred years ago and more. — yes, died, — with a 
small triangular mark in one breast, and another 
smaller opposite, in his back, where another young 
man's rapier had slid through his body ; and so 
he lay down out there on the Common, and was 
found cold the next morning, with the night-dews 
and the death-dews mingled on his forehead. 

Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave, 
— said I. — His bofies lie where his body was laid 
so long ago, and where the stone says they lie, — 
which is more than can be said of most of the 
tenants of this and several other burial-grounds. 
[The most accursed act of Vandalism ever 
committed within my knowledge was the uproot- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 293 

ing of the ancient gravestones in three at least of 
our city burial-grounds, and one at least just out- 
side the city, and planting them in rows to suit 
the taste for symmetry of the perpetrators. Many 
years ago, when this disgraceful process was going 
on under my eyes, I addressed an indignant re- 
monstrance to a leading journal. I suppose it 
was deficient in literary elegance, or too warm in 
its language ; for no notice was taken of it, and 
the hyena-horror was allowed to complete itself in 
the face of daylight. I have never got over it. 
The bones of my own ancestors, being entombed, 
lie beneath their own tablet; but the upright 
stones have been shuffled about like chessmen, 
and nothing short of the Day of Judgment will 
tell whose dust lies beneath any of those records, 
meant by affection to mark one small spot as sa- 
cred to some cherished memory. Shame ! shame ! 
shame ! — that is all I can say. It was on public 
thoroughfares, under the eye of authority, that 
this infamy was enacted. The red Indians w^ould 
have known better ; the selectmen of an African 
kraal-village would have had more respect for their 
ancestors. I should like tc^ see the gravestones 
which have been disturbed all removed, and the 
ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones ; epi- 
taphs were never famous for truth, but the old re- 
proach of " Here lies " never had such a wholesale 
illustration as in these outraged burial-places, 



294 ^^^ AUTOCRAT 

where the stone does lie above, and the bones 
do not lie beneath.] 

Stop before we turn away, and breathe a wo- 
man's sigh over poor Benjamin^'s dust. Love 
killed him, I think. Twenty years old, and out 
there fighting another young fellow on the Com- 
mon, in the cool of tbat old July evening ; — yes, 
there must have been love at the bottom of it. 

The schoolmistress dropped a rose-bud she had 
in her hand, through the rails, upon the grave of 
Benjamin Woodbridge. That was all her com- 
ment upon what I told her. — How women love 
Love, said I ; — but she did not speak. 

We came opposite the head of a place or court 
running eastward from the main street. — Look 
down there, — I said. — My friend the Professor 
lived in that house at the left hand, next the far- 
ther corner, for years and years. He died out of 
it, the other day. — Died ? — said the schoolmis- 
tress. — Certainly, — said I. — We die out of 
houses, just as we die out of our bodies. A com- 
mercial smash kills a hundred men's houses for 
them, as a railroad crash kills their mortal frames 
and drives out the immortal tenants. Men sicken 
of houses until at last they quit them, as the soul 
leaves its body when it is tired of its infirmities. 
The body has been called " the house we live in " ; 
the house is quite as much the body we live in. 
Shall I tell you some things the Professor said the 
other day ? — Do ! — said the schoolmistress. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 295 

A man's body, — said the Professor, — is what- 
ever is occupied by his will and his sensibility. 
The small room down there, where I wrote those 
papers you remember reading, was much more a 
portion of my body than a paralytic's senseless 
and motionless arm or leg is of his. 

The soul of a man has a series of concentric 
envelopes round it, like the core of an onion, or 
the innermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has 
his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then, 
his artificial integuments, with their true skin of 
soljd stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their 
variously-tinted pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, 
be it a single chamber or a stately mansion. And 
then, the whole visible world, in which Time but- 
tons him up as in a loose outside wrapper. 

You shall observe, — the Professor said, — for, 
like Mr. John Hunter and other great men, he 
brings in that shall with great effect sometimes, — 
you shall observe that a man's clothing or series 
of envelopes does after a certain time mould itself 
upon his individual nature. We know this of our 
hats, and are always reminded of it when we hap- 
pen to put them on wrong side foremost. We 
soon find that the beaver is a hollow cast of the 
skull, with all its irregular bumps and depressions. 
Just so all that clothes a man, even to the blue 
sky which caps his head, — a little loosely, — 
shapes itself to fit each particular being beneath 



296 THE AUTOCRAT 

it. Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets, lovers, 
condemned criminals, all find it different, accord- 
ing to the eyes with which they severally look. 

But our houses shape themselves palpably on 
our inner and outer natures. See a householder 
breaking up and you will be sure of it. There is 
a shell-fish w^hich builds all manner of smaller 
shells into the walls of its own. A house is 
never a home until we have crusted it with the 
spoils of a hundred lives besides those of our own 
past. See what these are and you can tell what 
the occupant is. 

I had no idea, — said the Professor, — until I 
pulled up my domestic establishment the other 
day, w^hat an enormous quantity of roots I had 
been making during the years I was planted there. 
Why, there was n't a nook or a corner that some 
fibre had not worked its w^ay into ; and when I 
gave the last wrench, each of them seemed to 
shriek like a mandrake, as it broke its hold and 
came away. 

There is nothing that happens, you know, 
which must not inevitably, and which does not 
actually, photograph itself in every conceivable 
aspect and in all dimensions. The infinite gal- 
leries of the Past await but one brief process and 
all their pictures will be called out and fixed for- 
ever. We had a curious illustration of the great 
fact on a very humble scale. When a certain 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 297 

bookcase, long standing in one place, for which it 
was built, was removed, there was the exact image 
on the wall of the whole, and of many of its por- 
tions. But in the midst of this picture was an- 
other, — the precise outline of a map which had 
hung on the wall before the bookcase was built. 
We had all forgotten everything about the map 
until we saw its photograph on the wall. Then 
we remembered it, as some day or other we may 
remember a sin which has been built over and 
covered up, when this lower universe is pulled 
away from before the wall of Infinity, where the 
wrong-doing stands self-recorded. 

The Professor lived in that house a long time, 
— not twenty years, but pretty near it. When he 
entered that door, two shadows glided over the 
threshold ; five lingered in the doorway when he 
passed through it for the last time, — and one of 
the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer 
than his own. What changes he saw in that 
quiet place ! Death rained through every roof 
but his ; children came into life, grew to maturity, 
wedded, faded away, threw themselves away ; the 
whole drama of life was played in that stock-com- 
pany's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which 
was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity 
ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to those 
walls, forever, — the Professor said, — for the 
many pleasant years he has passed within them ! 



298 THE AUTOCRAT 

The Professor has a friend, now living at a dis- 
tance, who has been with him in many of his 
changes of place, and who follows him in imagina- 
tion with tender interest wherever he goes. — In 
that little court, where he lived in gay loneliness 
so long, — 

— in liis autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, 
where it comes loitering down from its mountain 
fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the 
small proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, 
until it gets proud and swollen and wantons in 
huge luxurious oxbows about the fair Northamp- 
ton meadows, and at last overflows the oldest in- 
habitant's memory in profligate freshets at Hart- 
ford and all along its lower shores, — up in that 
caravansary on the banks of the stream where 
Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial 
old Colonel used to lead the Commencement pro- 
cessions, — where blue Ascutney looked down 
from the far distance, and the hills of Beulah, 
as the Professor always called them, rolled up the 
opposite horizon in soft climbing masses, so sug- 
gestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he 
used to look through his old "Dollond" to see 
if the Shining Ones were not within range of 
sight, — sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday 
walks which carry them by the peaceful common, 
through the solemn village lying in cataleptic still- 
ness under the shadow of the rod of Moses, to the 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 299 

terminus of their harmless stroll, — the patulous 
fage, in the Professor's classic dialect, — the 
spreading beech, in more familiar phrase, — [stop 
and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is 
not done vet, and we have another long journey 
before us,] — 

— and again once more up among those other 
hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, 
— dark stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that 
shine beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry- 
wine-eyed demi-blondes, — in the home overlook- 
ing the winding stream and the smooth, flat 
meadow ; looked down upon by wild hills, where 
the tracks of bears and catamounts may yet some- 
times be seen upon the winter snow ; facing the 
twin summits which rise in the far North, the 
highest waves of the great land-storm in all this 
billowy region, — suggestive to mad fancies of 
the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched 
out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden 
away beneath the leaves of the forest, — in 
that home where seven blessed summers were 
passed, which stand in memory like the seven 
golden candlesticks in the beatific vision of the 
holy dreamer, — 

— in that modest dwelling we were just looking 
at, not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of 
its drab and mahogany, — full of great and little 
boys' playthings from top to bottom, — in all 



300 THE AUTOCRAT 

these summer or winter nests he was always at 
home and always welcome. 

This long articulated sigh of reminiscences, — 
this calenture which shows me the maple-shadowed 
plains of Berkshire and the mountain-circled green 
of Grafton beneath the salt waves which come 
feeling their way along the wall at my feet, rest- 
less and soft-touching as blind men's busy fingers, 
— is for that friend of mine who looks into the wa- 
ters of the Patapsco and sees beneath them the 
same visions which paint themselves for me in the 
green depths of the Charles. 

Did I talk all this off to the schoolmis- 
tress ? — Why, no, of course not. I have been 
talking with you, the reader, for the last ten 
minutes. You don't think I -should expect any 
woman to listen to such a sentence as that long 
one, without giving her a chance to put in a 
word ? 

^ What did I say to the schoolmistress ? — 

Permit me one moment. I don't doubt your 
delicacy and good-breeding ; but in this particular 
case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking 
alone with a very interesting young woman, you 
must allow me to remark, in the classic version 
of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin 
Franklin, it is nullum tui negotii. 

When the schoolmistress and I reached the 
school-room door, the damask roses I spoke of 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 301 

were so much heightened in color by exercise that 
I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll 
like this every morning, and made up my mind I 
would ask her to let me join her again. 

EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL. 

{To be burned unread.) 

I am afraid I have been a fool ; for I have told 
as much of myself to this young person as if she 
were of that ripe and discreet age which invites 
confidence and expansive utterance. I have been 
low-spirited and listless, lately, — it is coffee, I 
think, — (I observe that which is bought ready- 
ground never affects the head,) — and I notice that 
I tell my secrets too easily when I am down- 
hearted. 

There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, 
like that on Dighton Rock, are nev€r to be seen 
except at dead-low tide. 

There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the 
side of my deepest ocean-buried inscription ! 

no, no, no ! a thousand times, no ! — 

Yet what is this which has been shaping itself in 
my soul 1 — Is it a thought '? — is it a dream ? — 
is it a passion ? — Then I know what comes next. 

The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy 

hill ; those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk 
in, in bad weather. But there are iron bars to all 



302 THE AUTOCRAT 

the windows. When it is fair, some of us can 
stroll outside that very high fence. But I never 
see much life in those groups I sometimes meet ; 
— and then the careful man watches them so 
closely ! How I remember that sad company I 
used to pass on fine mornings, when I was a 
school-boy ! — B., with his arms full of yellow 
weeds, — ore from the gold-mines which he dis- 
covered long before we heard of California, — Y., 
born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake 
(the boys said), dogged, explosive, — made a Poly- 
phemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vi- 
cious flirt with a stick, — (the multi-millionnaires 
sent him a trifle, it was said, to buy another eye 
with ; but boys are jealous of rich folks, and I 
don^t doubt the good people made him easy for 
life,) — how I remember them all! 

I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of 
Eblis, in <* Yathek," and how each shape, as it 
lifted its hand from its breast, showed its heart, — 
a burning coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on 
yonder summit. Go there on the next visiting- 
day, and ask that figure crouched in the corner, 
huddled up like those Indian mummies and skel- 
etons found buried in the sitting posture, to lift 
its hand, — look upon its heart, and behold, not 
fire, but ashes. — No, I must not think of such an 
ending ! Dying would be a much more gentle- 
manly way of meeting the difficulty. Make a will 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



303 



and leave her a house or two and some stocks, 
and other little financial conveniences, to take 
away her necessity for keeping school. — I won- 
der what nice young man's feet would be in my 
French slippers before six months were over ! 
Well, what then '? If a man really loves a wo- 
man, of course he wouldn't marry her for the 
world, if he w^ere not quite sure that he was the 
best person she could by any possibility marry. 

It is odd enough to read over what I have 

just been writing. — It is the merest fancy that 
ever was in the world. I shall never be married-. 
She will ; and if she is as pleasant as she has been 
so far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and 
take tea with her and her husband, sometimes. 
No coffee, I hope, though, — it depresses me sadly. 
I feel very miserably ; — they must have been grind- 
ing it at home. — Another morning walk will be 
good for me, and I don't doubt the schoolmistress 
will be glad of a little fresh air before school. 

The throbbing flushes of the poetical in- 
termittent have been coming over me from time to 
time of late. Did you ever see that electrical ex- 
periment which consists in passing a flash through 
letters of gold leaf in a darkened room, whereupon 
some name or legend springs out of the darkness 
in characters of fire ? 

There are songs all written out in my soul. 



304 THE AUTOCRAT 

which I could read, if the flash might pass 
through them, — but the fire must come down 
from heaven. Ah ! but what if the stormy nim- 
hus of youthful passion has blown by, and one 
asks for lightning from the ragged cirrus of dis- 
solving aspirations, or the silvered cumulus of 
sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the 
dead poets believed in, whom living ones no 
longer worship, — the immortal maid, who, name 
her what you will, — Goddess, Muse, Spirit of 
Beauty, — sits by the pillow of every youthful 
poet, and bends over his pale forehead until her 
tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold into 
his dreams. 

MUSA. 

my lost Beauty ! — hast thou folded quite 

Thy wings of morning light 

Beyond those iron gates 
"Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, 
And Age upon his mound of ashes waits 

To chill our fiery dreams, 
Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams ? 

Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, 

Whose flowers are silvered hair ! — 

Have I not loved thee long, 
Though my young lips have often done thee wrong 
And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song ? 

Ah, wilt thou yet return, 
Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar bum ? 

Come to me ! — I will flood thy silent shrine 
With my soul's sacred wine, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 305 

And heap thy marble floors 
As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores 
In leafy islands walled with madrepores 

And lapped in Orient seas, 
When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze. 

Come to me ! — thou shalt feed on honeyed words, 

Sweeter than song of birds ; — 

No wailing bulbul's throat, 
No melting dulcimer's melodious note, 
Wher o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, 

Thy ravished sense might soothe 
With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. 

Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, 

Sought in those bowers of green 

Where loop the clustered vines 
And the close-clinging dulcamara twines, — 
Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, 

And Summer's fruited gems. 
And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. 

Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves, — 

Or stretched by grass-grown graves. 

Whose gray, high-shouldered stones. 
Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, 
Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones 

Still slumbering where they lay 
While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away. 

Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing ! 

Still let me dream and sing, — 

Dream of that winding shore 
Where scarlet cardinals bloom, — for me no more, — 
The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor. 

And clustering nenuphars 
Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars ! 

Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed ! — 
Come while the rose is red, — 
20 



3o6 THE AUTOCRAT 

While blue-eyed Summer smiles 
On the green ripples round yon sunken piles 
Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, 

And on the sultry air 
The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer ! 

O for thy burning lips to fire my brain 

With thrills of wild, sweet pain ! — 

On life's autumnal blast, 
Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast, — 
Once loving thee, we love thee to the last ! — 

Behold thy new-decked shrine, 
And hear once more the voice that breathed " Forever thine I " 




11 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 307 




XI. 

J]HE company looked a little flustered 
one morning when I came in, — so 
much so, that I inquired of my neigh- 
bor, the divinity-student, what had been 
It appears that the young fellow whom 
they call John had taken advantage of my being a 
little late (I having been rather longer than usual 
dressing that morning) to circulate several ques- 
tions involving a quibble or play upon words, — 
in short, containing that indignity to the human 
understanding, condemned in the passages from 
the distinguished moralist of the last century and 
the illustrious historian of the present, which I 
cited on a former occasion, and known as a pun. 
After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a 
small roll of paper containing some of the ques- 
tions and their answers. I subjoin two or three 
of them, to show what a tendency there is to fri- 
volity and meaningless talk in young persons of a 
certain sort, when not restrained by the presence 
of more reflective natures. — It was asked, ^' Why 
tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short- 
lived insects.'' Some interesting physiological 



3o8 THE AUTOCRAT 

relation would be naturally suggested. The in- 
quirer blushes to find that the answer is in the 
paltry equivocation, .that they skip a day or two. 

— " Why an Englishman must go to the Conti- 
nent to weaken his grog or punch." The answer 
proves to have no relation whatever to the temper- 
ance movement, as no better reason is given than 
that island- (or, as it is absurdly written, He and) 
water won't mix. — But when I came to the next 
question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased 
to be a virtue. " Why an onion is like a piano " 
is a query that a person of sensibility would be 
slow to propose ; but that in an educated com- 
munity an individual could be found to answer it 
in these words, — " Because it smell odious," 
quasi^ it 's melodious, — is not credible, but too 
true. I can show you the paper. 

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating 
such things. I know most conversations reported 
in books are altogether above such trivial details, 
but folly will come up at every table as surely as 
purslain and chickweed and sorrel will come up in 
gardens. This young fellow ought to have talked 
philosophy, I know perfectly well ; but he did n't, 

— he made jokes.] 

I am willing, — I said, — to exercise your in- 
genuity in a rational and contemplative manner. 

— No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philo- 
sophical speculation which involve an approach to 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 309 

the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, 
for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father 
Thomas Sanchez, in his famous Disputations, 
" De Sancto Matrimonio." I will therefore turn 
this levity of yours to profit by reading you a 
rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend the 
Professor. 

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE : 
OR THE WONDERFUL '' ONE-HOSS SHAY." 

A LOGICAL STORY. 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way 
It ran a hundred years to a day, 

And then, of a sudden, it ah, but stay, 

I '11 tell you what happened without delay, 
Scaring the parson into fits. 
Frightening people out of their wits, — 
Have you ever heard of that, I say ? 

Seventeen hundred and fifty-fire. 
Georgius Secundus was then alive, — 
SnuflFy old drone from the German hive. 
That was the year when Lisbon-town 
Saw the earth open and gulp her down, 
And Braddock's army was done so brown, 
Left without a scalp to its crown. 
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day 
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. 

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, 
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, — 
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill. 
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, 



3IO THE AUTOCRAT 

In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still, 
Find it somewhere you must and will, — 
Above or below, or within or without, — 
And that 's the reason, beyond a doubt, 
A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out. 

But the Deacon swore, (as Deacons do. 

With an " I dew vum," or an " I tell ycow,") 

He would build one shay to beat the taown 

'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' 5 

It should be so built that it could n' break daown 

— " Fur," said the Deacon, " 't 's mighty plain 

Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain j 

'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 

Is only jest 
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." 

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk 

Where he could find the strongest oak. 

That could n't be split nor bent nor broke, — 

That was for spokes and floor and sills j 

He sent for lancewood to make the thills j 

The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees ; 

The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, 

But lasts like iron for things like these 5 

The hubs of logs from the " Settler's ellum," — 

Last of its timber, — they could n't sell 'em, 

Never an axe had seen their chips. 

And the wedges flew from between their lips, 

Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips ; 

Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 

Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 

Steel of the finest, bright and blue 5 

Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide ^ 

Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide 

Found in the pit when the tanner died. 

That was the way he " put her through." — 

" There I " said the Deacon, " naow she '11 dew." 



OF TH^ BREAKFAST-TABLE. 311 

Do ! I tell you, I rather guess 

She was a wonder, and nothing less ! 

Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, 

Deacon and deaconess dropped away, 

Children and grandchildren — where were they? 

But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay 

As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day ! 

Eighteen hundred ; it came and found 
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. 
Eighteen hundred increased by ten 5 — 
" Hahnsum kerridge " they called it then. 
Eighteen hundred and twenty came ; — 
Running as usual ; much the same. 
Thirty and forty at last arrive, 
And then come fifty, and fifty-five. 

Little of all we value here 

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 

"Without both feeling and looking queer. 

In fact there 's nothing that keeps its youth, 

So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 

(This is a moral that runs at large 5 

Take it. — You 're welcome. — No extra charge.) . 

First of November, — the Earthquake-day. — 
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, 
A general flavor of mild decay. 
But nothing local, as one may say. 
There could n't be, — for the Deacon's art 
Had made it so like in every part 
That there was n't a chance for one to start. 
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, 
And the floor was just as strong as the sills. 
And the yianels just as strong as the floor. 
And the whippletree neither less nor more, 
And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, 
And spring and axle and hub encore. 



312 THE AUTOCRAT 

And yet, as a whole ^ it is past a doubt 
In another hour it will be worn out ! 



This morning the parson takes a drive. 

Now, small boys, get out of the way ! 

Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, 

Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe -necked bay. 

" Huddup ! " said the parson. — Off went they. 

The parson was working his Sunday's text, — 
Had got to fifthly^ and stopped perplexed 
At what the — Moses — was coming next. 
All at once the horse stood still. 
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. 

— First a shiver, and then a thrill. 
Then something decidedly like a spill, — 
And the jjarson was sitting upon a rock, 

At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock, — 
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! 

— What do you think the parson found. 
When he got up and stared around ? 
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
As if it had been to the mill and ground ! 
You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, 
How it went to pieces all at once, — 

All at once, and nothing first, — 
Just as bubbles do when they burst. 

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. 
Logic is logic. That 's all I say. 

— I think there is one habit, — I said to our 



company a day or two afterwards, — worse than 
that of punning. It is the gradual substitution 
of cant or flash terms for words which truly char- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 313 

acterize tlicir objects. I have known several very 
genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deli- 
quesced into some half-dozen expressions. All 
things fell into one of two great categories, — fast 
or slow. Man's chief end was to be a brick. When 
the great calamities of life overtook their friends, 
these last were spoken of as being a good deal cut 
up. Nine tenths of human existence were summed 
up in the single word, bore. These expressions come 
to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have 
grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They 
are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy ; — 
you may fill them up with what idea you like ; it 
makes no difference, for there are no funds in the 
treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges 
and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places 
where these conversational fungi spring up most 
luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper 
use and application of a cant word or phrase. It 
adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom 
does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toad- 
stool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the in- 
tellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of 
men and youths capable of talking, as it some- 
times does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is 
commonly the dishwater from the washings of 
English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung 
out of a three-volume novel which had sopped it 
up, or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr. Ver- 



314 THE AUTOCRAT 

dant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial cli- 
mate. 

The young fellow called John spoke up 

sharply and said, it was " rum " to hear me 
" pitchin' into fellers " for " goin' it in the slang 
line," when I used all the flash words myself just 
when 1 pleased. 

I replied with my usual forbearance. — 

Certainly, to give up the algebraic symbol, be- 
cause a or h is often a cover for ideal nihility, 
would be unwise. I have heard a child laboring 
to express a certain condition, involving a hither- 
to undescribed sensation, (as it supposed,) all of 
which could have been sufficiently explained by 
the participle — hored. I have seen a country 
clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one- 
horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable 
time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion 
of a brother-minister's discourse which would have 
been abundantly characterized by a peach-down- 
lipped sophomore in the one word — slow. Let 
us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscrip- 
tion. I am omniverbivorous by nature and train- 
ing. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I 
can swallow most others, and chew such as I can- 
not swallow. 

Dandies are not good for much, but they are 
good for something. They invent or keep in 
circulation those conversational blank checks or 



OF TEE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 315 

counters just spoken of, which intellectual capital- 
ists may sometimes find it worth their while to 
borrow of them. They are useful, too, in keep- 
ing up the standard of dress, which, but for them, 
would deteriorate, and become, what some old 
fools would have it, a matter of convenience, and 
not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well 
enough, — on one condition. . 

What is that, sir ? — said the divinity-stu- 
dent. 

That they have pluck. I find that lies at 

the bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy 
dressed up very fine, who puts his finger in his 
mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make 
fun of him, looks very silly. But if he turns red 
in the face and knotty in the fists, and makes an 
example of the biggest of his assailants, throwing 
off his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jack- 
et, if necessary, to consummate the act of justice, 
his small toggery takes on the splendors of the 
crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. You re- 
member that the Duke said his dandy ofiicers were 
his best officers. The " Sunday blood,'^ the super- 
superb sartorial equestrian of our annual Fast- 
day, is not imposing or dangerous. But such fel- 
lows as Brummel and D'Orsay and Byron are not 
to be snubbed quite so easily. Look out for ^' la 
main de fer sous le gant de velours,^' (which I 
printed in English the other day without quota- 



3i6 THE AUTOCRAT 

tion-marks, thinking whether any scarabceus criticus 
would add this to his glohe and roll in glory with 
it into the newspapers, — which he didn't do it, 
in the charming pleonasm of the London language, 
and therefore I claim the sole merit of exposing 
the same.) A good many powerful and danger- 
ous people have had a decided dash of dandyism 
about them. There, was Alcibiades, the ^' curled 
son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but 
what would be called a " swell " in these days. 
There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer, 
of whom you have heard, — a philosopher, in 
short, whom it took centuries to learn, centuries 
to unlearn, and is now going to take a generation 
or more to learn over again. Regular dandy, he 
was. So was Marcus Antonius ; and though he 
lost his game, he played for big stakes, and it 
was n^t his dandyism that spoiled his chance. 
Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar or a 
poet, but he was one of the same sort. So was 
Sir Humphrey Davy; so was Lord Palmerston, 
formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes, — a dandy 
is good for something as such ; and dandies such 
as I was just speaking of have rocked this planet 
like a cradle, — ay, and left it swinging to this 
day. — Still, if I were you, I would n't go to the 
tailor's, on the strength of these remarks, and run 
up a long bill which will render pockets a super- 
fluity in your next suit. Elegans "nascitury non 



OF THE BREAKFAST^TABLE 317 

^fit.'^ A man is born a dandy, as he is born a 
poet. There are heads that can't wear hats ; 
there are necks that can't fit cravats ; there are 
jaws that can't fill out collars — (Willis touched 
this last point in one of his earlier ambrotypes, if 
I remember rightly) ; there are tournures nothing 
can humanize, and movements nothing can sub- 
due to the gracious suavity or elegant languor or 
stately serenity which belong to different styles of 
dandyism. 

We are forming an aristocracy, as you may ob- 
serve, in this country, — not a gratid-Dd, nor a 
jure-divino one, — but a de-facto upper stratum of 
being, which floats over the turbid waves of com- 
mon life like the iridescent film you may have 
seen spreading over the water about our wharves, 
— very splendid, though its origin may have been 
tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous com- 
modities. I say, then, we are forming an aristoc- 
racy ; and, transitory as its individual life often 
is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. Of 
course, money is its corner-stone. But now ob- 
serve this. Money kept for two or three genera- 
tions transforms a race, — I don't mean merely in 
manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and 
bone. Money buys air and sunshine, in which 
children grow up more kindly, of course, than in 
close, back streets ; it buys country-places to give 
them happy and healthy summers, good nursing, 



3i8 THE AUTOCRAT 

good doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and mut* 
ton. When the spring-chickens come to market 

I beg your pardon, — that is not what I was 

going to speak of. As the young females of each 
successive season come on, the finest specimens 
among them, other things being equal, are apt to 
attract those who can afford the expensive luxury 
of beauty. The physical character of the next 
generation rises in consequence. It is plain that 
certain families have in this way acquired an ele- 
vated type of face and figure, and that in a small 
circle of city connections one may sometimes find 
models of both sexes which one of the rural coun- 
ties would find it hard to match from all its town- 
ships put together. Because there is a good deal 
of running down, of degeneration and waste of 
life, among the richer classes, you must not over-~ 
look the equally obvious fact I have just spoken 
of, — which in one or two generations more will 
be, I think, much more patent than just now. 

The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the 
same I have alluded to in connection with cheap 
dandyism. Its thorough manhood, its high-caste 
gallantry, are not so manifest as the plate-glass of 
its windows and the more or less legitimate her- 
aldry of its coach-panels. It is very curious to 
observe of how small account military folks are 
held among our Northern people. Our young 
men must gild their spurs, but they need not win 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 319 

them. The equal division of property keeps the 
younger sons of rich people above the necessity 
of military service. Thus the army loses an ele- 
ment of refinement, and the moneyed upper class 
forgets -what it is to count heroism among its vir- 
tues. Still I don't believe in any aristocracy with- 
out pluck as its backbone. Ours may show it 
when the time comes, if it ever does come. 

These United States furnish the greatest 

market for intellectual green fruit of all the places 
in the world. I think so, at any rate. The de- 
mand for intellectual labor is so enormous and the 
market so far from nice, that young talent is apt 
to fare like unripe gooseberries, — get plucked to 
make" a fool of. Think of a country which buys 
eighty thousand copies of the " Proverbial Philos- 
ophy," while the author's admiring countrymen 
have been buying twelve thousand ! How can one 
let his fruit hang in the sun until it gets fully ripe, 
while there are eighty thousand such hungry 
mouths ready to swallow it and proclaim its prais- 
es ^ Consequently, there never was such a collec- 
tion of crude pippins and half-grown windfalls as 
our native literature displays among its fruits. 
There are literary green-groceries at every corner, 
which will buy anything, from a button-pear to a 
pine-apple. It takes a long apprenticeship to train 
a whole people to reading and writing. The 
temptation of money and fame is too great for 



320 THE AUTOCRAT 

young people. Do I not remember that glorious 

moment when the late Mr. we won't say who, 

— editor of the we won't say what, offered me 

the sum of fifty cents per double-columned quarto 
page for shaking my young boughs over his fools- 
cap apron ? Was it not an intoxicating vision of 
gold and glory 1 I should doubtless have revelled 
in its wealth and splendor, but for learning that 
the Jifty cents was to be considered a rhetorical em- 
bellishment, and by no means a literal expression 
of past fact or present intention. 

Beware of making your moral staple con- 
sist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, 
and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful 
or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to 
emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely 
also on the more nutritious diet of active sympa- 
thetic benevolence. 

1 don't believe one word of what you are 

saying, — spoke up the angular female in black 
bombazine. 

I am sorry you disbelieve it, madam, — I said, 
and added softly to my next neighbor, — but you 
prove it. 

The young fellow sitting near me winked ; and 
the divinity-student said, in an undertone, — Op- 
time dictum. 

Your talking Latin, — said I, — reminds me of 
an odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read so 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 321 

much of that language, that his English half turned 
into it. He got caught in town, one hot summer, 
in pretty close quarters, and wrote, or began to 
write, a series of city pastorals. Eclogues he 
called them, and meant to have published theni by 
subscription. I remember some of his verses, if 
you want to hear them. — You, sir, (addressing 
myself to the divinity-student,) and all such as 
have been through college, or what is the same 
thing, received an honorary degree, will understand 
them without a dictionary. The old man had a 
great deal to say about " aestivation,'' as he called 
it, in opposition, as one might say, to hibernation. 
Intramural aestivation, or town-life in summer, he 
would say, is" a peculiar form of suspended exist- 
ence, or semi-asphyxia. One wakes up from it 
about the beginning of the last week in Septem- 
ber. This is what I remember of his poem : — 



AESTIVATION. 

An Unpublished Poemj by my late Latin Tutor. 

In candent ire the solar splendor flames •, 
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames 5 
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, 
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. 

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, 
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, 
Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, 
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine J 
21 



322 THE AUTOCRAT 

To me, alas ! no verdurous visions come, 
Save yon exiguous pool's con!erva-scum, — 
No concave vast repeats the tender hue 
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue ! 

Me wretched ! Let me curr to quercine shades I 
EflFund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids ! 
O, might I vole to some umbrageous clump, — 
Depart, — be off, — excede, — evade, — erump ! 



1 have lived by the sea-shore and bv the 

mountains. — No, I am not going to say which is 
best. The one where your place is is the best for 
you. But this difference there is : you can do- 
mesticate mountains, but the sea is feroe naturce. 
You may have a hut, or know the owner of one, 
on the mountain-side ; you see a light half-way up 
its ascent in the evening, and you know there is a 
home, and you might share it. You have noted 
certain trees, perhaps; you know the particular 
zone where the hemlocks look so black in Octo- 
ber, when the maples and beeches have faded. All 
its reliefs and intaglios have electrotyped them- 
selves in the medallions that hang round the walls 
of your memory's chamber. — The sea remembers 
nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet, — its 
huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you ; but it 
will crack your bones and eat you, for all that, and 
wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if noth- 
ing had happened. The mountains give their lost 
children berries and water ; the sea mocks their 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 323 

thirst and lets them die. The mountains have a 
grand, stupid, loveable tranquillity ; the sea has a 
fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The moun- 
tains lie about like huge ruminants, their broad 
backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle. The 
sea smooths its silver scales, until j^ou cannot see 
their joints, — but their shining is that of a snake's 
belly, after all. — In deeper suggestiveness I find 
as great a difference. The mountains dwarf man- 
kind and foreshorten the procession of its long 
generations. The sea dro^vns out humanity and 
time ; it has no sympathy with either ; for it be- 
longs to eternity, and of that it sings its monoto- 
nous song for ever and ever. 

Yet I should love to have a little box by the 
sea-shore. I should love to gaze out on the wild 
feline element from a front window of my own, * 
just as I should love to look on a caged panther, 
and see it stretch its shining length, and then curl 
over and lap its smooth sides, and by and by begin 
to lash itself into rage and show its white teeth and 
spring at its bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, 
to me, harmless fury. — And then, — to look at it 
with that inward eye, — w ho does not love to shuf- 
fle off time and its concerns, at intervals, — to for- 
get who is President and who is Governor, what 
race he belongs to, what language he speaks, 
which golden-headed nail of the firmament his par- 
ticular planetar}' system is hung upon, and listen 



324 THE AUTOCRAT 

to the great liquid metronome as it beats its sol- 
emn measure, steadily swinging when the solo or 
duet of human life began, and to swing just as 
steadily after the human chorus has died out and 
man is a fossil on its shores ? 

What should decide one, in choosing a 

summer residence ? — Constitution, first of all. 
How much snow could you melt in an hour, if 
you were planted in a hogshead of it ? Comfort 
is essential to enjoyment. All sensitive people 
should remember that persons in easy circumstan- 
ces suffer much more from cold in summer — that 
is, the warm half of the year — than in winter, or 
the other half. You must cut your climate to 
your constitution, as much as your clothing to 
your shape. After this, consult your taste and 
convenience. But if you would be happy in Berk- 
shire, you must carry mountains in your brain ; 
and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must have an 
ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos 
with you ; you must match her piece, or she will 
never give it up to you. 

The schoolmistress said, in a rather mis- 
chievous way, that she was afraid some minds or 
souls would be a little crowded, if they took in the 
Eocky Mountains or the Atlantic. 

Have you ever read the little book called ^' The 
Stars and the Earth V — said I. — Have you seen 
the Declaration of Independence photographed in 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 325 

a surfiice that a fly*s foot would cover ? The forms 
or couditious of Time and Space, as Kant will tell 
you, are nothing in themselves, — only our way 
of looking at things. You are right, 1 think, how- 
ever, in recognizing the category of Space as be- 
ing quite as applicable to minds as to the outer 
world. Every man of reflection is vaguely con- 
scious of an imperfectly-defined circle which is 
drawn about his intellect. He has a perfectly 
clear sense that the fragments of his intellectual 
circle include the curves of many other minds of 
which he is cognizant. He often recognizes these 
as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less 
radius. On the other hand, when we find a por- 
tion of an arc on the outside of our own, we say 
it intersects ours, but are very slow to confess or to 
see that it circumscribes it. Every now and then a 
man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, 
and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. 
After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had 
been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, 
and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that 
I had to spread these to fit it. 

If 1 thought I should ever see the Alps ! 

— said the schoolmistress. 

Perhaps you will, some time or other, — I said. 

It is not very likely, — she answered. — I have 
had one or two opportunities, but I had rather be 
anything than governess in a rich family. 



326 THE AUTOCRAT 

[Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman ! Well, 
I can't say I like you any the worse for it. How 
long will school-keeping take to kill you '? Is it 
possible the poor thing works with her needle, 
too ? I don't like those marks on the side of her 
forefinger. 

Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. 
Figures in the foreground ; two of them standing 

apart ; one of them a gentleman of oh, — ah, 

— yes ! the other a lady in a white cashmere, 
leaning on his shoulder. — The ingenuous reader 
will understand that this was an internal, private, 
personal, subjective diorama, seen for one instant 
on the background of my own consciousness, and 
abolished into black nonentity by the first question 
which recalled me to actual life, as suddenly as if 
one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass 
at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over 
some poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken 
off by its sudden and unexpected descent, and left 
outside upon the sidewalk) had come down in 
front of it " by the run."] 

Should you like to hear what moderate 

wishes life brings one to at last ? I used to be 
very ambitious, — w^asteful, extravagant, and lux- 
urious in all my fancies. Read too much in the 
" Arabian Nights." Must have the lamp, — 
could n't do without the ring. Exercise every 
morning on the brazen horse. Plump down into 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 327 

castles as fall of little milk-white princesses as a 
nest is of young sparrows. All love me dearly at 
once. — Charming idea of life, but too high-colored 
for the reality. I have outgrown all this ; my 
tastes have become exceedingly primitive, — al- 
most, perhaps, ascetic. We carry happiness into 
our condition, but must not hope to find it there. 
I think you will be willing to hear some lines 
which embody the subdued and limited desires of 
my maturity. 

CONTENTMENT. 

" Man wants but little here below." 

Little I ask ; my wants are few ; 

I only wish a hut of stone, 
(A very plain brown stone will do,) 
That I may call my own •, — 
And close at hand is such a one, 
In yonder street that fronts the sun. 

Plain food is quite enough for me ; 

Three courses are as good as ten *, — 
If Nature can subsist on three, 

Thank Heaven for three. Amen I 
I always thought cold victual nice ^ — 
My choice would be vanilla-ice. 

I care not much for gold or land ; — 

Give me a mortgage here and there, — 
Some good bank-stock, — some note of hand, 

Or trifling railroad share -, — 
I only ask that Fortune send 
A little more than I shall spend. 



328 THE AUTOCRAT 

Honors are silly toys, I know, 

And titles are but empty names ; — 
I would, perhaps^ be Plenipo, — 
But only near St. James 5 
I 'm very sure I should not care 
To fill our Gubernator's chair. 

Jewels are bawbles 5 't is a sin 

To care for such unfruitful things 5 — 

One good-sized diamond in a pin, — 

Some, not so large ^ in rings, — 
A ruby, and a pearl, or so, 
Will do for me J — I laugh at show. 

My dame should dress in cheap attire j 

(Good, heavy silks are never dear •,) — 
I own perhaps I wigr A ^ desire 

Some shawls of true Cashmere, — 
Some marrowy crapes of China silk. 
Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. 

I would not have the horse I drive 

So fast that folks must stop and stare ; 
An easy gait — two, forty-five — 

Suits me ; I do not care ; — 
Perhaps, for just a single spurt, 
Some seconds less would do no hurt. 

Of pictures I should like to own 

Titians and Raphaels three or four, — 
I love so much their style and tone, — 

One Turner, and no more, — 
(A landscape, — foreground golden dirt,- 
The sunshine painted with a squirt.) 

Of books but few, — some fifty score 

For daily use, and bound for wear j 
The rest upon an upper floor ; — 
Some little luxury there 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 329 

Of red morocco's gilded gleam, 
And vellum rich as country cream. 

Busts, cameos, gems, — such things as these, 

"Which others often show for pride, 
/ value for their power to please, 

And selfish churls deride *, — 
One Stradivarius, I confess, 
Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess 

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, 
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool 5 — 
Shall not carved tables serve my turn. 

But all must be of buhl ? 
Give grasping pomp its double share, — 
I ask but one recumbent chair. 

Thus humble let me live and die, 

Nor long for Midas' golden touch. 
If Heaven more generous gifts deny, 

I shall not miss them 771WC A, — 
Too grateful for the blessing lent 
Of simple tastes and mind content ! 



MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 

{A Parenthesis.) 

I can't saj just how' many walks she and I had 
taken together before this one. I found the effect 
of going out every morning was decidedly favor- 
able on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the 
places for which were just marked when she came, 
played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when 
she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from 
the school-house steps. 



330 THE AUTOCRAT 

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. 
At anv rate, if I should try to report all that I 
said during the first half-dozen walks we took 
together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint 
from my friends the publishers, that a separate 
volume, at my own risk and expense, would be 
the proper method of bringing them before the 
public. 

1 would have a woman as true as Death. 

At the first real lie w^hich works from the heart 
outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into 
a better world, where she can have an angel for a 
governess, and feed on strange fruits which will 
make her all over again, even to her bones and 
marrow. — Whether gifted with the accident of 
beauty or not, she should have been moulded in 
the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life 
made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a 
congenital endowment ; and I think, after a while, 
one gets to know the w^arm-hued natures it be- 
longs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of 
them. — Proud she may be, in the sense of respect- 
ing herself; but pride in the sense of contemning 
others less gifted than herself deserves the two 
lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where 
the punishments are Small-pox and Bankruptcy. 
She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, as 
one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon 
those whom she ought cordially' and kindly to 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 331 

recognize, proclaims the fact that she comes not 
merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Con- 
sciousness of unquestioned position makes people 
gracious in proper measure to all ; but if a woman 
puts on airs with her real equals, she has some- 
thing about herself or her family she is ashamed 
of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than mid- 
dle-aged people, who know family histories, gen- 
erally see through it. An official of standing was 
rude to me once. 0, that is the maternal grand- 
father, — said a wise old friend to me, — he was a 
boor. — Better too few words, from the woman 
we love, than too many : while she is silent, Na- 
ture is working for her ; while she talks, she is 
working for herself. — Love is sparingly soluble in 
the words of men ; therefore they speak much of 
it ; but one syllable of woman's speech can dis- 
solve more of it than a man's heart can hold. 

Whether I said any or all of these things 

to the schoolmistress, or not, — whether I stole 
them out of Lord Bacon, — whether I cribbed 
them from Balzac, — whether I dipped them from 
the ocean of Tupperian wisdom, — or whether I 
have just found them in my head, laid there by 
that solemn fowl. Experience, (who, according to 
my observation, cackles oftener than she drops 
real live eggs,) I cannot say. Wise men have 
said more foolish things, — and foolish men, I 
don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, 



332 THE AUTOCRAT 

the schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and 
long talks, all of which I do not feel bound to 
report. 

You are a strangers to me, ma'am. — I 

don't doubt you would like to know all I said 
to the schoolmistress. — I sha'n't do it ; — I had 
rather get the publishers to return the money you 
have invested in this. Besides, I have forgotten 
a good deal of it. I shall tell only what I like 
of what I remember. 

My idea was, in the first place, to search 

out the picturesque spots which the city affords a 
sight of, to those who have eyes. I know a good 
many, and it was a pleasure to look at them in 
company with my young friend. There were the 
shrubs and flowers in the Franklin Place front- 
yards or borders ; Commerce is just putting his 
granite foot upon them. Then there are certain 
small seraglio-gardens, into which one can get a 
peep through the crevices of high fences, — one in 
Myrtle Street, or backing on it, — here and there 
one at the North and South Ends. Then the 
great elms in Essex Street. Then the stately 
horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers 
Street, which hold their outspread hands over 
your head, (as I said in my poem the other day,) 
and look as if they were whispering, " May grace, 
mercy, and peace be with you ! '' — and the rest of 
th^ benediction. Nay, there are certain patches 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 333 

of ground, which, having lain neglected for a time, 
Nature, who always has her pockets full of seeds, 
and holes in all her pockets, has covered with hun- 
gry plebeian growths, which fight for life with each 
other, until some of them get broad-leaved and 
succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapes- 
try which Raphael would not have disdained to 
spread over the foreground of his masterpiece. 
The Professor pretends that he found such a one 
in Charles Street, which, in its dare-devil impu- 
dence of rough-and-tumble vegetation, beat the 
pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Gaixlen 
as ignominiously as a group of young tatterde- 
malions playing pitch-and-toss beats a row of Sun^ 
day-school boys with their teacher at their head. 

But then the Professor has one of his burrows 
in that region, and puts everything in high colors 
relating to it. That is his way about everything. 

1 hold any man cheap, — he said, — of whom 

nothing stronger can be uttered than that all his 

geese are swans. How is that, Professor 1 — 

said I ; — I should have set you down for one of 

that sort. Sir, — said he, — I am proud to say, 

that Nature has so far enriched me, that I cannot 
own so much as a duck without seeing in it as pret- 
ty a swan as ever swam the basin in the garden 
of the Luxembourg. And the Professor showed 
the whites of his eyes devoutly, like one returning 
thanks after a dinner of manv courses. 



334 THE AUTOCRAT 

I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking 
in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls 
and floors of cities. You heap up a million tons 
of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth 
which was green once. The trees look down from 
the hillsides and ask each other, as they stand on 
tiptoe, — " What are these people about ? " And 
the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper 
back, — " We will go and see.'' So the small herbs 
pack themselves up in the least possible bundles, 
and wait until the wind steals to them at night 
and whispers, — "Come with me." Then they 
go softly with it into the great city, — otie to a 
cleft in the pavement, one to a spout on the roof, 
one to a seam in the marbles over a rich gentle- 
man's bones, and one to the grave without a stone 
where nothing but a man is buried, — and there 
they grow, looking down on the generations of 
men from mouldy roofs, looking up from between 
the less-trodden pavements, looking out through 
iron cemetery-railings. Listen to them, when 
there is only a light breath stirring, and you will 
hear them saying to each other, — " Wait awhile ! " 
The words run along the telegraph of those nar- 
row green lines that border the roads leading from 
the city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and 
the trees repeat in low murmurs to each other, — 
" Wait awhile ! " By and by the flow of life in 
the streets ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants — 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 335 

the smaller tribes always in front — saunter in, 
one by one, very careless seemingly, but very te- 
nacious, until they swarm so that the great stones 
gape from each other with the crowding of their 
roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of 
the granite to find them food. At last the trees 
take np their solemn line of march, and never rest 
until they have encamped in the market-place. 
TVait long enough and you will find an old doting 
oak hugging a huge worn block in its yellow un- 
derground arms ; that was the corner-stone of the 
State-House. 0, so patient she is, this imperturb- 
able Nature ! 

Let us cry ! 

But all this has nothing to do with my walks 
and talks with the schoolmistress. I did not say 
that I would not tell you something about them. 
Let me alone, and I shall talk to you more than I 
ought to, probably. We never tell our secrets to 
people that pump for them. 

Books we talked about, and education. It was 
her duty to know something of these, and of course 
she did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned 
than she, but I found that the difference between 
her reading and mine was like that of a man's 
and a woman's dusting a library. The man flaps 
about with a bunch of feathers ; the woman goes 
to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise 
half the dust, nor fill her own mouth and eves 



336 THE AUTOCRAT 

with it, — but she goes into all the corners, and 
attends to the leaves as much as the covers. — 
Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the 
more sensitive the mind that I'eceives their images, 
the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A 
woman, (of the right kind,) reading after a man,, 
follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, 
and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat. 

But it was in talking of Life that we came most 
nearly together. I thought I knew something 
about that, — that I could speak or write about 
it somewhat to the purpose. 

To take up this fiuid earthly being of ours as a 
sponge sucks up water, — to be steeped and soaked 
in its realities as a hide fills its pores lying seveh 
years in a tan-pit, — to have winnowed every wave 
of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that 
runs through the flume upon its float-boards, — to 
have curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened 
out in the laxest languors of this breathing-sick- 
ness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy 
for three or four score years, — to have fought all 
the devils and clasped all the angels of its de- 
lirium, — and then, just at the point when the 
white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry- 
red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream 
of some human language or other, one might 
think would end in a rhapsody with something 
of spring and temper in it. All this I thought 
my power and province. 






OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 337 

The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once i-n 
a while one meets with a single soul greater than 
all the living pageant which passes before it. As 
the pale astronomer sits in his study w^ith sunken 
eyes and thin lingers, and weighs Uranus or Kep- 
fune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight wo- 
men who have weighed all which this planetary 
life can otfer, and hold it like a bawble in the palm 
of their slender hands. This w^as one of them. 
Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; 
the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost 
friendless city life were before her. Yet, as I 
looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regain- 
ing a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, as 
she became interested in the various matters we 
talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye 
and lip and every shifting lineament were made 
for love, — unconscious of their sweet office as 
yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the 
natural graces which were meant for the reward 
of nothing less than the Great Passion. 

1 never addressed one word of love to the 

schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant 
walks. It seemed to me that we talked of every- 
thing but love on that particular morning. There 
was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy 
on my part than I have commonly shown among 
our people at the boarding-house. In fact, I con- 
sidered myself the master at the breakfast-table; 
22 



338 THE AUTOCRAT 

but, somehow, I could not command myself just 
then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured 
a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was 
to leave at noon, — with the condition, however, 
of being released in case circumstances occurred 
to detain me. The s-choolmistress knew nothing 
about all this, of course, as yet. 

It was on the Common that we were walking. 
The mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, 
has various branches leading from it in different 
directions. One of these runs down from oppo- 
site Joy Street southw^ard across the whole length 
of the Common to Boylston Street. We called it 
the long path, and were fond of it. 

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably 
robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this 
path on that morning. I think I tried to speak 
twice without making myself distinctly audible. 

At last I got out the question, Will you take 

the long path with me ? Certainly, — said the 

schoolmistress, — wath much pleasure. Think, 

— I said, — before you answer ; if you take the 
long path with me now, I shall interpret it that 

we are to part no more ! The schoolmistress 

stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an 
arrow had struck her. 

One of the long granite blocks nsed as seats was 
hard by, — the one you may still see close by the 
Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down, — I said. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 339 

No, no, she answered, softly, — I will walk the 
long path with you ! 

The old gentleman who sits opposite met 

us walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the 
long path, and said, very charmingly, — '' Good 
morning, my dears '. " 




340 



THE AUTOCRAT 




XII. 

DID not think it probable that I should 
haA^e a great many more talks with our 
company, and therefore I was anxious 
to get as much as I could into every 
conversation. That is the reason why you will 
find some odd, miscellaneous facts here, which I 
wished to tell at least once, as I should not have 
a chance to tell them habitually, at our breakfast- 
table. — We 're very free and easy, you know ; we 
don't read what we don't like. Our parish is so 
large, one can't pretend to preach to all the pews 
at once. One can't be all the time trying to do 
the best of one's best ; if a company works a steam 
fire-engine, the firemen need n't be straining them- 
selves all day to squirt over the top of the flag- 
staff. Let them wash some of those lower-story 
windows a little. Besides, there is no use in our 
quarrelling now, as you will find out when you 
get through this paper.] 

Travel, according to my experience, does 

not exactly correspond to the idea one gets of it 
out of most books of travels. I am thinking of 
travel as it was when I made the Grand Tour, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 341 

especially in Italy. Memory is a net ; one finds 
it full of iish when he takes it from the brook ; but 
a dozen miles of water have run through it without 
sticking. I can prove some facts about travelling 
by a story or two. There are certain principles 
to be assumed, — such as these : — He who is car- 
ried by horses must deal with rogues. — To-day*s 
dinner subtends a larger visual angle than yester- 
day's revolution. A mote in my eye is bigger to 
me than the biggest of Dr. Gould^s private plan- 
ets. — Every traveller is a self-taught entomologist. 
— Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension ; 
an old joke tells better among friends travelling 
than at home, — which shows that their minds 
are in a state of diminished rather than increased 
vitality. There was a story about " strahps to 
your pahnts,'* which w^as vastly funny to us fel- 
lows — on the road from Milan to Venice. — Ccer 
lum non animum, — travellers change their guineas, 
but not their characters. The bore is the same, 
eating dates under the cedars of Lebanon, as over 
a plate of baked beans in Beacon Street. — Parties 
of travellers have a morbid instinct for " establish- 
ing raws'* upon each other. — A man shall sit 
down with his friend at the foot of the Great Pyr- 
amid and they will take up the question they had 
been talking about under " the great elm,'' and 
forget all about Egypt. When I was crossing the 
Po, we were all fighting about the propriety of one 



342 



THE AUTOCRAT 



fellow's telling another that his argument was ab- 
surd ; one maintaining it to be a perfectly admis- 
sible logical term, as proved by the phrase " re- 
dactio ad absurdum " ; the rest badgering him as 
a conversational bully. Mighty little we troubled 
ourselves for Padus, the Po, *' a river broader and 
more rapid than the Rhone," and the times when 
Hannibal led his grim Africans to its banks, and 
his elephants thrust their trunks into the yellow 
waters over which that pendulum ferry-boat was 
swinging back and forward every ten minutes ! 

Here are some of those reminiscences, with 

morals prefixed, or annexed, or implied. 

Lively emotions very commonly do not strike 
us full in front, but obliquely from the side ; a 
scene or incident in undress often affects us more 
than one in full costume. 

" Is this the mighty ocean ? — is this all ? " 

says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that should 
have flooded my soul in the Coliseum did not 
come. But walking one day in the fields about 
the city, I stumbled over a fragment of broken 
masonry, and lo ! the World's Mistress in her 
stone girdle — alta moenia RomcB — rose before me 
and whitened my cheek with her pale shadow as 
never before or since. 

I used very- often, when coming home from my 
morning's work at one of the public institutions 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 343 

of Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of St. 
Etienne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve, 
surrounded by burning candles' and votive tablets, 
was there ; the mural tablet of Jacobus Benignus 
Winslow was there ; there was a noble organ with 
carved figures ; the pulpit was borne on the oaken 
shoulders of a stooping Samson ; and there was a 
marvellous staircase like a coil of lace. These 
things I mention from memory, but not all of 
them together impressed me so much as an in- 
scription on a small slab of marble fixed in one of 
the walls. It told how this church of St. Stephen 
was repaired and beautified in the year 16**, and 
how^ during the celebration of its reopening, two 
girls of the parish (jilles de la paroisse) fell from 
the gallery, carrying a part of the balustrade with 
them, to the pavement, but by a miracle escaped 
uninjured. Two young girls, nameless, but real 
presences to my imagination, as much as when 
they came fluttering down on the tiles with a 
cry that outscreamed the sharpest treble in the 
Te Deum. (Look at Carlyle's article on Boswell, 
and see how he speaks of the poor young woman 
Johnson talked with in the streets one evening.) 
All the crowd gone but these two " filles de la 
paroisse," — gone as utterly as the dresses they 
wore, as the shoes that were on their feet, as 
the bread and meat that were in the market on 
that day. 



344 I'^E AUTOCRAT 

Not the great historical events, but the personal 
incidents that call up single sharp pictures of 
some human being in its pang or struggle, reach 
us most nearly. I remember the platform at 
Berne, over the parapet of which Theobald Wein- 
zapfli's restive horse sprung with him and landed 
him more than a hundred feet beneath in the 
lower town, not dead, but sorely broken, and no 
longer a wild youth, but God's servant from that 
day forward. I have forgotten the famous bears, 
and all else. — I remember the Percy lion on the 
bridge over the little river at Alnwick, — the 
leaden lion Avith his tail stretched out straight 
like a pump-handle, — and why 1 Because of the 
story of the village boy who must fain bestride 
the leaden tail, standing out over the water, — 
which breaking, he dropped into the stream far 
below, and was taken out an idiot for the rest of 
his life. 

Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point, 
and the guillotine-axe must have a slanting edge. 
Something intensely human, narrow, and definite 
pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily 
than huge occurrences and catastrophes. A nail 
will pick a lock that defies hatchet and hammer. 
" The Royal George " went down with all her 
crew, and Cowper wrote an exquisitely simple 
poem about it ; but the leaf which holds it is 
smooth, while that which bears the lines on his 
mother's portrait is blistered with tears. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 345 

My telling these recollections sets me thinking 
of others of the same kind whioh strike the imag- 
ination, especially when one is still young. You 
remember the monument in DcA^zes market to the 
woman struck dead with a lie in her mouth. I 
never saw that, but it is in the books. Here is 
one I never heard mentioned ; — if any of the 
*' Note and Query " tribe can tell the story, *I 
hope they will. Where is this monument ? I 
w^as riding on an English stage-coach when we 
passed a handsome marble column (as I remem- 
ber it) of considerable size and pretensions. — 
What is that ? — I said. — That, — answered the 
coachman, — is the hangman's pillar. Then he 
told me how a man wxnt out one night, many 
years ago, to steal sheep. He caught one, tied its 
legs together, passed the rope over his head, and 
started for home. In climbing a fence, the rope 
slipped, caught him by the neck, and strangled 
him. Next morning he w^as found hanging dead 
on one side of the fence and the sheep on the 
other ; in memory whereof the lord of the manor 
caused this monument to be erected as a warning 
to all who love mutton better than virtue. I will 
send a copy of this record to him or her who 
shall first set me right about this column and 
its locality. 

And telling over these old stories reminds me 
that I have something which may interest archi- 



346 THE AUTOCRAT 

tects and perhaps some other persons. I once 
ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which 
is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft 
of stone filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the 
guide puts his arms behind you to keep you from 
falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, 
and to think of having climbed it crisps all the 
fifty-six joints of one's twenty digits. While I 
was on it, "pinnacled dim in the intense inane," 
a strong wind was blowing, and I felt sure that 
the spire was rocking. It swayed back and for- 
ward like a stalk of rye or a cat-o'-nine-tails (bul- 
rush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to 
the guide, and he said that the spire did really 
swing back and forward, — I think he said some 
feet. 

Keep, any line of knowledge ten years, and some 
other line will intersect it. Long afterwards I was 
hunting out a paper of DumeriFs in an old jour- 
nal, — the " Magazin Encyclopedique " for Van 
troisidme, (1795,) when I stumbled upon a brief 
article on the vibrations of the spire of Strasburg 
Cathedral. A man can shake it so that the move- 
ment shall be shown in a vessel of water nearly 
seventy feet below the summit, and higher up the 
vibration is like that of an earthquake. I have 
seen one of those wretched wooden spires with 
which we very shabbily finish some of our stone 
churches (thinking that the lidless blue eye of 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 347 

heaven cannot tell the counterfeit we try to pass 
on it) swinging like a reed in a wind, but one 
would hardly think of such a thing's happening in 
a stone spire. Does the Bunker-Hill Monument 
bend in the blast like a blade of grass ? I sup- 
pose so. 

You see, of course, that I am talking in a cheap 
way ; — perhaps we will have some philosophy by 
and by ; — let me work out this thin mechanical 
vein. — I have something more to say about trees. 
I have brought down this slice of hemlock to show 
you. Tree blew down in my woods (that were) 
in 1852. Twelve feet and a half round, fair girth ; 
— nine feet, Avhere I got my section, higher up. 
This is a wedge, going to the centre, of the gen- 
eral shape of a slice of apple-pie in a large and 
not opulent family. Length, about eighteen 
inches. I have studied the growth of this tree 
by its rings, and it is curious. Three hundred 
and forty-two rings. Started, therefore, about 
1510. The thickness of the rings tells the rate at 
which it grew. For five or six years the rate was 
slow, — then rapid for twenty years. A little 
before the year 1550 it began to grow very slowly, ; 
and so continued for about seventy years. In 
1620 it took a new start and grew fast until 1714, 
then for the most part slowly until 1786, when it 
started again and grew pretty well and uniformly 
until within the last dozen years, when it seems to 
have got on sluggishly. 



348 THE AUTOCRAT 

Look here. Here are some human lives laid 
down against the periods of its growth, to which 
they corresponded. This is Shakespeare's. The 
tree was seven inches in diameter when he was 
born ; ten inches when he died. A little less 
than ten inches when Milton was born; seven- 
teen when he died. Then comes a long interval, 
and this thread marks out Johnson's life, during 
which the tree increased from twenty-two to twen- 
ty-nine inches in diameter. Here is the span of 
Napoleon's career ; — the tree does n't seem to 
have minded it. 

I never saw the man yet who was not startled 
at looking on this section. I have seen many 
wooden preachers, — never one like this. How 
much more striking would be the calendar count- 
ed on the rings of one of those awful trees which 
were standing when Christ was on earth, and 
where that brief mortal life is chronicled with the 
stolid apathy of vegetable being, which remembers 
all human history as a thing of yesterday in its 
own dateless existence ! 

I have something more to say about elms. A 
relative tells me there is one of great glory in An- 
dover, near Bradford. I have some recollections 
of the former place, pleasant and other. [I won- 
der if the old Seminary clock strikes as slowly as 
it used to. My room-mate thought, when he first 
caijie, it was the bell tolling deaths, and people's 



OF TEE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 349 

ages, as they do in the country. He swore — 
(ministers' sons get so familiar with good words 
that they are apt to handle them carelessly) — 
that the children were dying by the dozen, of all 
ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next day in 
recess, Avhen it began to strike eleven, but was 
caught before the clock got through striking.] 
At the foot of " the hill," down in town, is, or 
was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been 
hooped with iron to protect it from Indian toma- 
hawks, (Credat Hahnemannus,) and to have grown 
round its hoops and buried them in its wood. Of 
course, this is not the tree my relative means. 

Also, I have a very pretty letter from Norwich, in 
Connecticut, telling me of two noble elms which 
are to be seen in that town. One hundred and 
twenty-seven feet from bough-end to bough-end ! 
What do you say to that '? And gentle ladies be- 
neath it, that love it and celebrate its praises ! 
And that in a town of such supreme, audacious, 
Alpine loveliness as Norwich ! — Only the dear 
people there must learn to call it Norridge, and 
not be misled by the mere accident of spelling. 
Norit'icA. 
PorcAmouth. 
CincinnataA. 
What a sad picture of our civilization ! 

I did not speak to you of the great tree on what 
used to be the Colman farm, in Deerfield, simply 



3 so THE AUTOCRAT 

because I had not seen it for many years, and did 
not like to trust my recollection. But I had it in 
memory, and even noted down, as one of the finest 
trees in symmetry and beauty I had ever seen. I 
have received a document, signed by two citizens 
of a neighboring town, certified by the postmaster 
and a selectman, and these again corroborated, 
reinforced, and sworn to by a member of that 
extraordinary college-class to which it is the good 
fortune of my friend the Professor to belong, who, 
though he has formerly been a member of Con- 
gress, is, I believe, fully worthy of confidence. 
The tree " girts " eighteen and a half feet, and 
spreads over a hundred, and is a real beauty. I 
hope to meet my friend under its branches yet ; 
if we don't have "youth at the prow," we will 
have " pleasure at the 'elm." 

And just now, again, I have got a letter about 
some grand willows in Maine, and another about 
an elm in Wayland, but too late for anything but 
thanks. 

[And this leads me to say, that I have received 
a great many communications, in prose and verse, 
since I began printing these notes. The last 
came this very morning, in the shape of a neat 
and brief poem, from New Orleans. I could not 
make any of them public, though sometimes re- 
quested to do so. Some of them have given me 
great pleasure, and encouraged me to believe I 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 351 

had friends whose faces I had never seen. If you 
arc pleased with anything a writer says, and 
doubt whether to tell liim of it, do not hesitate ; 
a pleasant word is a cordial to one, who perhaps 
thinks he is tiring you, and so becomes tired 
himself. I purr very loud over a good, honest 
letter that says pretty things to me.] 

Sometimes very young persons send com 

munications which they want forwarded to edi- 
tors ; and these young persons do not always 
seem to have right conceptions of these same edi- 
tors, and of the public, and of themselves. Here 
is a letter I wrote to one of these young folks, 
but, on the whole, thought it best not to send. 
It is not fair to single out one for such sharp 
advice, ^vhere there are hundreds that are in 
need of it. 

Dear Sir, — You seem to be somewhat, but 
not a great deal, wiser than I w^as at your age. 
I don't wish to be understood as saying too much, 
for I think, without committing myself to any 
opinion on my present state, that I was not a 
Solomon at that stage of development. 

You long to *' leap at a single bound into celeb- 
rity." Nothing is so commonplace as to wish to 
be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those 
who are thinking about something else, — very 
rarely to those who say to themselves, " Go to, 



352 THE AUTOCRAT 

now, let us be a celebrated individual ! " The 
struggle for fame, as such, commonly ends in 
notoriety ; — that ladder is easy to climb, but it 
leads to the pillory which is crowded with fools 
who could not hold their tongues and rogues who 
could not hide their tricks. 

If you have the consciousness of genius, do 
something to show it. The world is pretty quick, 
now-a-days, to catch the flavor of true originality ; 
if you write anything remarkable, the magazines 
and newspapers will find you out, as the school- 
boys find out where the ripe apples and pears are. 
Produce anything really good, and an intelligent 
editor will jump at it. Don't flatter yourself that 
any article of yours is rejected because you are 
unknown to fame. Nothing pleases an editor 
more than to get anything worth having from a 
new hand. There is always a dearth of really 
fine articles for a first-rate journal ; for, of a hun- 
dred pieces received, ninety are at or below the 
sea-level ; some have water enough, but no head ; 
some head enough, but no water; only two or 
three are from full reservoirs, high up that hill 
which is so hard to climb. 

You may have genius. The contrary is of 
course probable, but it is not demonstrated. If 
you have, the world wants you more than you 
want it. It has not only a desire, but a passion, 
for every spark of genius that shows itself among 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 



353 



us ; there is not a bull-calf in our national pasture 
that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to one, among 
his Mends, and no takers, that he is the real, 
genuine, no-mistake Osiris. 

Qn'est ce qu'il a fait? What has he done'? 
That was Napoleon's test. What have you done '^ 
Turn up the faces of your picture-cards, my boy ! 
You need not make mouths at the public because 
it has not accepted you at your own fancy-valu- 
ation. Do the prettiest thing you can, and wait 
your time. 

For the verses you send me, I will not say they 
are hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show 
promise. I am not an editor, but I know the 
standard of some editors. You must not expect 
to " leap with a single bound " into the society of 
those whom it is not flattery to call your betters. 
When '^ The Pactolian '' has paid you for a copy 
of verses, — (I can furnish you a list of alliter- 
ative signatures, beginning with Annie Aureole 
and ending with Zoe Zenith,) — when "The 
Kag-bag" has stolen your piece, after carefully 
scratching your name out, — when " The Nut- 
cracker" has thought you worth shelling, and 
strung the kernel of your cleverest poem, — then, 
and not till then, you may consider the presump- 
tion against you, from the fact of your rhyming 
tendency, as called in question, and let our friends 
hear from you, if you think it worth while. You 
23 



354 ^^HE AUTOCRAT 

may possibly think me too candid, and even ac- 
cuse me of incivility ; but let me assure you that 
I am not half so plain-spoken as Nature, nor half 
so rude as Time. If you prefer the long jolting 
of public opinion to the gentle touch of friendship, 
try it like a man. Only remember this, — that, 
if a bushel of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart 
without springs to it, the small potatoes always 
get to the bottom. Believe me, etc., etc. 

I always think of verse-writers, when I am in 
this vein ; for these are by far the most exacting, 
eager, self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreason- 
able literary persons one is like to meet with. Is 
a young man in the habit of writing verses ? 
Then the presumption is that he is an inferior 
person. For, look you, there are at least nine 
chances in ten that he writes poor verses. Now 
the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and 
soul to match them is, like that of using any other 
narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness and a debil- 
itating agent. A young man can get rid of the 
presumption against him afforded by his writing 
verses only by convincing us that they are verses 
worth writing. 

All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, 
it is not addressed to any individual, and of course 
does not refer to any reader of these pages. I 
would always treat any given young person pass- 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 355 

ing through the meteoric showers which rain down 
on the brief period of adolescence with great ten- 
derness. God forgive us if we ever speak harshly 
to young creatures on the strength of these ugly 
truths, and so, sooner or later, smite some tender- 
souled poet or poetess on the lips who might have 
sung the world into sweet trances, had we not 
silenced the matin-song in its first low breathings ! 
Just as my heart yearns over the unloA^ed, just so 
it sorrows for the ungifted who are doomed to the 
pangs of an undeceived self-estimate. I have al- 
ways tried to be gentle with the most hopeless 
cases. My experience, however, has not been en- 
couraging. 

X. Y., fet. 18, a cheaply-got-up youth, 

with narrow jaws, and broad, bony, cold, red 
hands, having been laughed at by the girls in his 
village, and " got the mitten '^ (pronounced mit- 
tm) two or three times, falls to souling and con- 
trolling, and youthing and truthing, in the news- 
papers. Sends me some strings of verses, candi- 
dates for the Orthopedic Infirmary, all of them, 
in which I learn for the millionth time one of the 
following facts; either that something about a 
chime is sublime, or that something about time is 
sublime, or that something about a chime is con- 
cerned with time, or that something about a 
rhyme is sublime or concerned with time or with 
a chime. Wishes my opinion of the same, with 
advice as to his future course. 



356 THE AUTOCRAT 

What shall I do about it ? Tell him the whole 
truth, and send him a ticket of admission to the 
Institution for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth ? 
One does n't like to be cruel, — and yet one hates 
to lie. Therefore one softens down the ugly cen- 
tral fact of donkeyism, — recommends study of 
good models, — that writing verse should be an 
incidental occupation only, not interfering with 
the hoe, the needle, the lapstone, or the ledger, — 
and, above all, that there should be no hurry in 
printing what is written. Not the least use in all 
this. The poetaster who has tasted type is done 
for. He is like the man who has once been a 
candidate for the Presidency. He feeds . on the 
madder of his delusion all his days, and his very 
bones grow red with the glow of his foolish fancy. 
One of these young brains is like a bunch of 
India crackers ; once touch lire to it and it is best 
to keep hands off until it has done popping, — ■ if 
it ever stops. I have two letters on file ; one is a 
pattern of adulation, the other of impertinence. 
My reply to the first, containing the best advice 
I could give, conveyed in courteous language, had 
brought out the second. There Was some sport 
in this, but Dulness is not commonly a game fish, 
and only sulks after he is struck. You may set 
it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, 
that those who ask your opinion really want your 
praise, and will be contented with nothing less. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 357 

There is another kind of application to which 
editors, or those supposed to have access to them, 
are liable, and -which often proves trying and 
painful. One is appealed to in behalf of some 
person in needy circumstances who wishes to 
make a living by the pen. A manuscript accom- 
panying the letter is offered for publication. It 
is not commonly brilliant, too often lamentably 
deficient. If Rachel's saying is true, that " for- 
tune is the measure of intelligence," then poverty 
is ei-idence of limited capacity, which it too fre- 
quently proves to be, notwithstanding a .noble 
exception here and there. Now an editor is a 
person under a contract with the public to furnish 
them with the best things he can afford for his 
money. Charity shown by the publication of an 
inferior article would be like the generosity of 
Claude Duval and the 'other gentlemen highway- 
men, who pitied the poor so much they robbed 
the rich to have the means of relieving them. 

Though I am not and never was an editor, I 
know something of the trials to which they are 
submitted. They have nothing to do but to de- 
velop enormous calluses at every point of contact 
with authorship. Their business is not a matter 
of sympathy, but of intellect. They must reject 
the unfit productions of those whom they long to 
befriend, because it would be a profligate charity 
to accept them. One cannot burn his house down 



358 THE AUTOCRAT 

to warm the hands even of the fatherless and the 
widow. 

THE PROFESSOR UNDER CHLOROFORM. 

You have n't heard about my friend the 

Professor's first experiment in the use of anaes- 
thetics, have you^ 

He was mightily pleased with the reception of 
that poem of his about the chaise. He spoke to 
me once or twice about another poem of similar 
character he wanted to read me, which I told him 
I would listen to and criticise. 

One day, after dinner, he came in with his face 
tied up, looking very red in the cheeks and heavy 
about the eyes. — HyVye? — he said, and made 
for an arm-chair, in which he placed first his hat 
and then his person, going smack through the 
crown of the former, as neatly as they do the trick 
at the circus. The Professor jumped at the ex- 
plosion as if he had sat down on one of those 
small calthrops our grandfathers used to sow round 
in the grass when there were Indians about, — 
iron stars, each ray a rusty thorn an inch and a 
half long, — stick through moccasins into feet, — 
cripple 'em on the spot, and give 'em lockjaw in a 
day or two. 

At the same time he let off one of those big 
words which lie at the bottom of the best man's 
vocabulary, but perhaps never turn up in his life. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 359 

— just as every man's hair may stand on end, but 
in most men it never does. 

After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet or 
two of manuscript, together with a smaller scrap, 
on which, as he said, he had just been writing an 
introduction or prelude to the main performance. 
A certain suspicion had come into my mind that 
the Professor was not quite right, which was con- 
firmed by the w^ay he talked ; but I let him begin. 
This is the way he read it : — 

Prelude. 

I 'm the fellah that tole one day 
The tale of the won'erful one-hoss shay. 
Wan' to hear another ? Say. 

— funny, was n'it ? Made me laugh, — 
I 'm too modest, I am, by half, — 
Made me laugh 's though I sh''d splits — 
Cahn' a fellah like fellah's own wit ? 

— Fellahs keep sayin', " Well, now that's nice } 
Did it once, but cahn' do it twice." — 

Don' you b'lieve the 'z no more fat } 
Lots in the kitch'n .'z good 'z that. 
Fus'-rate throw, 'n' no mistake, — 
Han' us the props for another shake •, — 
Know I Ml try, 'n' guess I '11 win 5 
Here sh' goes for hit 'm ag'in ! 

Here I thought it necessary to interpose. — Pro- 
fessor, — I said, — you are inebriated. The style 
of what you call your *' Prelude " shows that it was 
written under cerebral excitement. Your articu- 
lation is confused. You have told me three times 



360 THE AUTOCRAT 

in succession, in exactly the same words, that I 
was the only true friend you had in the world that 
you would unbutton your heart to. You smell 
distinctly aud decidedly of spirits. — I spoke, and 
paused ; tender, but firm. 

Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the 
Professor's lids, — in obedience to the principle of 
gravitation celebrated in that delicious bit of blad- 
dery bathos, " The very law that moulds a tear," 
with which the "Edinburgh Keview" attempted 
to put down Master George Gordon when that 
young man was foolishly trying to make himself 
conspicuous. 

One of these t^ars peeped over the edge of the 
lid until it lost its balance, — slid an inch and 
waited for reinforcements, — swelled again, — 
rolled down a little further, — stopped, — moved 
on, — and at last fell on the back of the Profes- 
sor's hand. He held it up for me to look at, and 
lifted his eyes, brimful, till they met mine. 

I could n't stand it, — I always break down 
when folks cry in my face, — so I hugged him, 
and said he was a dear old boy, and asked him 
kindly what was the matter with him, and what 
made him smell so dreadfully strong of spirits. 

Upset his alcohol lamp, — he said, — and spilt 
the alcohol on his legs. That was it. — But what 
had he been doing to get his head into such a 
state ? — had he really committed an excess ? 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 361 

What was the matter ? — Then it came out that 
he had been taking chloroform to have a tooth 
out, which had left him in a very queer state, in 
which he had written the '* Prelude" given above, 
and under the influence of which he evidently was 
still. 

I took the manuscript from his hands and read 
the following continuation of the lines he had be- 
gun to read me, while he made up for two or three 
nights' lost sleep as he best might. 

PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY: 

OR, THE president's OLD ARM-CHAIR. 

A MATHEMATICAL STORY. 

Facts respecting an old arm-chair. 
At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there. 
Seems but little the worse for wear. 
That 's remarkable when I say- 
It was old in President Holyoke's day. 
(One of his boj'S, perhaps you know, 
Died, at one hundred., years ago.) 
He took lodging for rain or shine . 
Under green bed-clothes in '69. 

Know Old Cambridge ? Hope you do. — 
Born there ? Don't say so 1 I was, too. 
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, — 
Standing still, if you must have proof. — 
" Gambrel ? — Gambrel ? " — Let me beg 
You '11 look at a horse's hinder leg, — 
First great angle above the hoof, — 
That 's the gambrel 5 hence gambrel-roof.)^ 
— Nicest place that ever was seen, — 



362 THE AUTOCRAT 

Colleges red and Common green, 
Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 
Sweetest spot beneath the skies 
When the canker-worms don't rise, — 
When the dust, that sometimes flies 
Into your mouth and ears and eyes, 
In a quiet slumber lies. 
Not in the shape of unbaked pies 
Such as barefoot children prize. 

A kind of harbor it seems to be, 
Facing the flow of a boundless sea. 
Rows of gray old Tutors stand 
Ranged like rocks above the sand ; 
Rolling beneath them, soft and green, 
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, — 
One wave, two waves, three waves, four, 
Sliding up the sparkling floor ; 
Then it ebbs to flow no more. 
Wandering off from shore to shore 
With its freight of golden ore ! 
— Pleasant place for boys to play 5 — 
Better keep your girls away 5 
Hearts get rolled as pebbles do 
Which countless fingering waves pursue. 
And every classic beach is strown 
With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone. 

But this is neither here nor there ; — 
I 'm talking about an old arm-chair. 
You 've heard, no doubt, of Parson Turell 
Over at Medford he used to dwell ; 
Married one of the Mathers' folk ; 
Got with his wife a chair of oak, — 
Funny old chair, with seat like wedge, 
Sharp behind and broad front edge, — 
One of the oddest of human things, 
Turned all over with knobs and rings, — 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 363 

But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand, — 

Fit for the worthies of the land, — 

Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in, 

Or Cotton Mather to sit — and lie — in. 

— Parson Turell bequeathed the same 

To a certain student, — Smith by name *, 

These were the terms, as we are told : 

" Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde } 

When he doth graduate, then to passe 

To ye oldest Youth in ye Senior Classe. 

On Payment of " — (naming a certain sum) — 

"By him to whom ye Chaire shall come •, 

He to ye oldest Senior next, 

And soe forever," — (thus runs the text,) — 

But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime, 

That being his Debte for use of same." 



Smith transferred it to one of the Browns, 
And took his money, — five silver crowns. 
Brown delivered it up to Moore, 
Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four. 
Moore made over the chair to Lee, 
Who gave him crowns of silver three. 
Lee conveyed it unto Drew, 
And now the payment, of course, was two. 
Drew gave up the chair to Dunn, — 
All he got, as you see, was one. 
Dunn released the chair to Hall, 
And got by the bargain no crown at all. 

And now it passed to a second Brown, 
Who took it, and likewise claimed a crown. 
When Brown conveyed it unto Ware, 
Having had one crown, to make it fair, 
He paid him two crowns to take the chair ; 
And PFare, being honest, (as all Wares be,) 
He paid one Potter, who took it, three. 
Four got Robinson ; five got Dix j 
Johnson primus demanded six ; 



364 THE AUTOCRAT 

And so the sum kept gathering still 
Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill. 

— When paper money became so cheap, 
Folks would n't count it, but said " a heap," 
A certain Richards, the books declare, — 
(A. M. in '90 ? I 've looked with care 
Through the Triennial, — name not there,) 
This person, Richards, was offered then 
Eight score pounds, but would have ten j 
Nine, I think, was the sum he took, — 

Not quite certain, — but see the book. — 
By and by the wars were still. 
But nothing had altered the Parson's will. 
The old arm-chair was solid yet. 
But saddled with such a monstrous debt l 
Things grew quite too bad to bear, 
Paying such sums to get rid of the chair ! 
But dead men's fingers hold awful tight. 
And there was the will in black and white, 
Plain enough for a child to spell. 
What should be done no man could tell, 
For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse. 
And every season but made it worse. 

As a last resort, to clear the doubt, 
They got old Governor Hancock out. 
The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop 
And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop 5 
Halberds glittered and colors flew, 
French horns whinnied and trumpets blew. 
The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth 
And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath ; 
So he rode with all his band. 
Till the President met him, cap in hand. 

— The Governor " hefted " the crowns, and said, - 
" A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." 

The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, — 
" There is your p'int. And here 's my fee. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 365 

These are the terms you must fulfil, — 

Oq such conditions I break the will I " 

The Governor mentioned what these should be. 

(Just wait a minute and then you Ml see.) 

The President prayed. Then all was still, 

And the Governor rose and broke the will ! 

— " About those conditions ? " Well, now you go 

And do as I tell you, and then you '11 know. 

Once a year, on Commencement-day, 

If you '11 only take the pains to stay, 

You '11 see the President in the Chair, 

Likewise the Governor sitting there. 

The President rises ; both old and young 

May hear his speech in a foreign tongue, 

The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear. 

Is this : Can I keep this old arm-chair ? 

And then his Excellency bows. 

As much as to say that he allows. 

The Yice-Gub. next is called by name ;' 

He bows like t' other, which means the same. 

And all the officers round 'em bow, 

As much as to say that they allow. 

And a lot of parchments about the chair 

Are handed to witnesses then and there, 

And then the lawyers hold it clear 

That the chair is safe for another year. 

God bless you, Gentlemen ! Learn to give 
Money to colleges while you live. 
Don't be silly and think you 'II try 
To bother the colleges when you die, 
"With codicil this, and codicil that. 
That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat 5 
For there never was pitcher that would n't spill, 
And there 's always a flaw in a donkey's will ! 

Hospitality is a good deal a matter of lati- 
tude, I suspect. The shade of a palm-tree serves 



366 THE AUTOCRAT 

an African for a hut ; his dwelling is all door and 
no walls ; everybody can come in. To make a 
morning call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, one 
must creep through a long tunnel ; his house is 
all walls and no door, except such a one as an 
apple with a worm-hole has. One might, very 
probably, trace a regular gradation between these 
two extremes. In cities where the evenings are 
generally hot, the people have porches at their 
^ doors, where they sit, and this is, of course, a 
} provocative to the interchange of civilities. A 
^' good deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to 
mean dispositions, belongs really to mean tem- 
perature. 

Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at 
noon, in a very hot summer's day, one may real- 
ize, by a sudden extension in his sphere of con- 
sciousness, how closely he is shut up for the most 
part. Do you not remember something like this '? 
July, between I and 2, p. m., Fahrenheit 96°, or 
thereabout. Windows all gaping, like the mouths 
of panting dogs. Long, stinging cry of a locust 
comes in from a tree, half a mile off; had forgot- 
ten there was such a tree. Baby's screams from 
a house several blocks distant ; — never knew 
there were any babies in the neighborhood before. 
Tinman pounding something that clatters dread- 
fully, — very distinct, but don't remember any 
tinman's shop near by.^ Horses stamping on 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 367 

pavement to get off flies. When you hear these 
four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. 
Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode 
of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody 
has described it : stroll into the market in natural 
costume, — buy a water-melon for a halfpenny, — 
split it, and scoop out the middle, — sit down in 
one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's 
head, and feast upon the pulp. 

1 see some of the London journals have 

been attacking some of their literary people for 
lecturing, on the ground of its being a public 
exhibition of themselves for money. A popular 
author can print his lecture; if he deliver it, it 
is a case of qucestum corpore^ or making profit of 
his person. None but " snobs '' do that. Ergo^ 
etc. To this I reply, Negatur minor. Her Most 
Gracious Majesty, the Queen, exhibits herself 
to the public as a part of the service for which 
she is paid. We do not consider it low-bred in 
her to pronounce her own speech, and should 
prefer it so to hearing it from any other person, 
or reading it. His Grace and his Lordship ex- 
hibit themselves very often for popularity, and 
their houses every day for money. — No, if a man 
shows himself other than he is, if he belittles him- 
self before an audience for hire, then he acts un- 
worthily. But a true word, fresh from the lips of 
a true man, is worth paying for, at the rate of 



368 THE AUTOCRAT 

eight dollars a day, or even of fifty dollars a lec- 
ture. The taunt must be an outbreak of jealousy 
against the renowned authors who have the au- 
dacity to be also orators. The sub-lieutenants (of 
the press) stick a too popular writer and speaker 
with an epithet in England, instead of with a 
rapier, as in France. — Poh ! All England is 
one great menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, 
who admires the gilded cage of the royal beast, 
must protest against the vulgarity of the talking- 
bird's and the nightingale's being willing to be- 
come a part of the exhibition ! 

THE LONG PATH. 

{Last of the Parentheses.) 

Yes, that was my last walk with the school- 
mistress. It happened to be the end of a term ; 
and before the next began, a very nice young 
woman, who had been her assistant, was an- 
nounced as her successor, and she was provided 
for elsewhere. So it was no longer the school- 
mistress that I walked wdth, but Let us not 

be in unseemly haste. I shall call her the school- 
mistress still ; some of you love her under that 
name. 

When it became known among the boarders 

that two of their number had joined hands to 
walk down the long path of life side by side, 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 369 

there was, as you may suppose, no small sen- 
sation. I confess I pitied our landlady. It took 
her all of a suddin, — she said. Had not known 
that we was keepin company, and never mistrusted 
anything particular. Ma'am was right to better 
herself. Did n't look very rugged to take care of 
a femily, but could get hired haalp, she calculated. 
— The great maternal instinct came crowding up 
in her soul just then, and her eyes wandered until 
they settled on her daughter. 

No, poor, dear woman, — that could not 

have been. But I am dropping one of my inter- 
nal tears for you, w4th this pleasant smile on my 
face all the time. 

The great mystery of God's providence is the 
permitted crushing out of flowering instincts. 
Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen 
and of sentiments. In the long catalogue of sci- 
entific cruelties there is hardly anything quite so 
painful to think of as that experiment of putting 
an animal under the bell of an air-pump and ex- 
hausting the air from it. [I never saw the ac- 
cursed trick performed. Laus Deo .'] There comes 
a time when the souls of human beings, women, 
perhaps, more even than men, begin to faint for the 
atmosphere of the affections they were made to 
breathe. Then it is that Society places its trans- 
parent bell-glass over the young woman who is to 
be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. The 
24 



370 THE AUTOCRAT 

element by which only the heart lives is sucked 
out of her crystalline prison. Watch her through 
its transparent walls ; — her bosom is heaving ; 
but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, com- 
pared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in 
the " Book of Martyrs.'' The " dry-pan and the 
gradual fire " were the images that frightened her 
most. How many have withered and wasted un- 
der as slow a torment in the walls of that larger 
Inquisition which we callCivilization ! 

Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you fool- 
ish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, 
self-saturated young person, whoever you may be, 
now reading this, — little thinking you are what I 
describe, and in blissful uncopsciousness" that you 
are destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul 
which is the lot of such multitudes worthier than 
yourself. But it is only my surface-thought which 
laughs. Tor that great procession of the unloved, 
who not only wear the crown of thorns, but must 
hide it under the locks of brown or gray, — under 
the snowy cap, under the chilling turban, — hide 
it even from themselves, — perhaps never know 
they wear it, though it kills them, — there is no 
depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has 
not sounded. Somewhere, — somewhere, — love 
is in store for them, — the universe must not be 
allowed to fool them so cruelly. What infinite 
pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices by 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 371 

which unattractive young persons seek to recom- 
mend themselves to the favor of those towards 
whom our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, 
are impelled by their God-given instincts ! 

Read what the singing- women — one to ten thou- 
sand of the suffering Avomen — tell us, and think 
of the griefs that die unspoken ! Nature is in ear- 
nest when she makes a woman ; and there are 
women enough lying in the next churchyard with 
very commonplace blue slate-stones at their head 
and feet, for whom it was just as true that "all 
sounds of life assumed one tone of love," as for 
Letitia Landon, of whom EHzabeth Browning said 
it ; but she could give words to her grief, and they 
could not. — Will you hear a few stanzas of mine ? 

THE VOICELESS. 

We count the broken lyres that rest 

Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, — 
But o'er their silent sister's breast 

The wild flowers who will stoop to number ? 
A few can touch the magic string, 

And noisy Fame is proud to win them •, — 
Alas for those that never sing, 

But die with all their music in them ! 

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone 

Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, — 
Weep for the voiceless, who have known 

The cross without the crown of glory ! 
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep 

O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, 
But where the glistening night-dews weep 

On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. 



372 THE AUTOCRAT 

hearts that break and give no sign 

Save whitening lip and fading tresses. 
Till death pours out his cordial wine 

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses, — 
If singing breath or echoing chord 

To every hidden pang were given, 
What endless melodies were poured. 

As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven ! 

I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so 
badly off, after all. That young man from an- 
other city who made the remark which you re- 
member about Boston State-house and Boston 
folks, has appeared at our table repeatedly of late, 
and has seemed to me rather attentive to this 
young lady. Only last evening I saw him lean- 
ing over her while she was playing the accordion, 

— indeed, I undertook to join them in a song, and 
got as far as " Come rest in this boo-oo," when, 
my voice getting tremulous, I turned off, as one 
steps out of a procession, and left the basso and 
soprano to finish it. I see no reason why this 
young woman should not be a very proper match 
for a man that laughs about Boston State-house. 
He can't be very particular. 

The young fellow whom I have so often men- 
tioned was a little free in his remarks, but very 
good-natured. — Sorry to have you go, — he said. 

— Schoolma'am made a mistake not to wait for 
me. Have n't taken anything but mournin' fruit at 
breakfast since I heard of it. Mourning fruity 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 



373 



- Huckleberries and 
blackberries, — said he ; — could n't eat in colors, 
raspberries, currants, and such, after a solemn 
thing like this happening. — The conceit seemed 
to please the young fellow. If you will believe it, 
when we came down to breakfast the next morn- 
ing, he had carried it out as follows. You know 
those odious little " saas-plates " that figure so 
largely at boarding-houses, and especially at tav- 
erns, into which a strenuous attendant female 
trowels little dabs, sombre of tint and heterogene- 
ous of composition, which it makes you feel home- 
sick to look at, and into which you poke the elas- 
tic coppery teaspoon with the air of a cat dipping 
her foot into a wash-tub, — (not that I mean to 
say anything against them, for when they are of 
tinted porcelain or starry many-faceted crystal, and 
hold clean bright berries, or pale virgin honey, or 
"lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon,'^ and the 
teaspoon is of white silver, with the Tower-stamp, 
solid, but not brutally heavy, — as people in the 
green stage of millionism will have them, — I can 
dally -with their amber semi-fluids or glossy spher- 
ules without a shiver,) — you know these small, 
deep dishes, I say. When we came down the 
next morning, each of these (two only excepted) 
was covered with a broad leaf. On lifting this, 
each boarder found a small heap of solemn black 
huckleberries. But one of those plates held red 



374 THE AUTOCRAT 

currants, and was covered with a red rose ; the 
other held white currants, and was covered with a 
white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, 
and then a short silence, and I noticed that her lip 
trembled, and the old gentleman opposite was in 
trouble to get at his bandanna handkerchief. 

" What was the use in waiting ? We 

should be too late for Switzerland, that season, 
if we waited much longer." — The hand I held 
trembled in mine, and the eyes fell meekly, as 
Esther bowed herself before the feet of Ahasuerus. 
— She had been reading that chapter, for she 
looked up, — if there was a film of moisture over 
her eyes there was also the faintest shadow of a 
distant smile skirting her lips, but not enough to 
accent the dimples, — and said, in her pretty, still 
way, — " If it please the king, and if I have found 
favor in his sight, and the thing seem right before 
the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes " 

I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or 
said when Esther got just to that point of her soft, 
humble words, — but I know what I did. That 
quotation from Scripture was cut short, anyhow. 
We came to a compromise on the great question, 
and the time was settled for the last day of sum- 
mer. 

In the mean time, I talked on with our board- 
ers, much as usual, as you may see by what I 
have reported. I must say, I was pleased with a 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 375 

certain tenderness they all showed toward us, after 
the first excitement of the ne\^ was over. It came 
out in trivial matters, — but each one in his, or 
her way, manifested kindness. Our landlady, for 
instance, when we had chickens, sent the liver in- 
stead of the gizzard^ with the wing, for the school- 
mistress. Tliis was not an accident ; the two are 
never mistaken, though some landladies appear as 
if they did not know the difference. The whole 
of the company were even more respectfully at- 
tentive to my remarks than usual. There was no 
idle punning, and very little winking on the part 
of that lively young gentleman who, as the reader 
may remember, occasionally interposed some play- 
ful question or remark, which could hardly be con- 
sidered relevant, — except when the least allusion 
was made to matrimony, when he would look at 
the landlady's daughter, and wink with both sides 
of his face, until she would ask what he was 
pokin' his fun at her for, and if he was n't ashamed 
of himself. In fact, they all behaved very hand- 
somely, so that I really felt sorry at the thought 
of leaving my boarding-house. 

I suppose you think, that, because I lived at a 
plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course 
more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune. 
You may not be sorry to learn, that, though not 
what great merchants call very rich, I was comfort- 
able, — comfortable, — so that most of those mod- 



376 THE AUTOCRAT 

erate luxuries I described in my verses on Content- 
ment — most of them, I say — were within our reach, 
if we chose to have them. But I found out that 
the schoolmistress had a vein of charity about her, 
which had hitherto been worked on a small silver 
and copper basis, which made her think less, per- 
haps, of luxuries than even I did, — modestly as I 
have expressed my wishes. 

It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young 
woman, whom one has contrived to win without 
showing his rent-roll, that she has found what the 
world values so highly, in following the lead of 
her affections. That was an enjoyment I was now 
ready for. 

I began abruptly : — Do you know that you are 
a rich young person ? 

I know that I am very rich, — she said. — 
Heaven has given me more than I ever asked ; 
for I had not thought love was ever meant for 
me. 

It was a woman's confession, and her voice fell 
to a whisper as it threaded the last words. 

I don't mean that, — I said, — you blessed little 
saint and seraph ! — if there 's an angel missing in 
the New Jerusalem, inquire for her at this board- 
ing-house ! — I don't mean that ! I mean that I 
— that is, you — am — are — confound it ! — I 
mean that you '11 be what most people call a lady 
of fortune. — And I looked full in her eyes for the 
effect of the announcement. 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. '^-j-j 

There was n't any. She said she was thankful 
that I had what would save me from drudgery, 
and that some other time I should tell her about 
it. — I never made a greater failure in an attempt 
to produce a sensation. 

So the last day of summer came. It was our 
choice to go to the church, but we had a kind of 
reception at the boarding-house. The presents 
were all arranged, and among them none gave 
mo^fe pleasure than the modest tributes of our fel- 
low-boarders, — for there was not one, I believe, 
who did not send something. The landlady would 
insist on making an elegant bride-cake, with her 
own hands ; to which Master Benjamin Frank- 
lin wished to add certain embellishments out of 
his private funds, — namely, a Cupid in a mouse- 
trap, done in white sugar, and two miniature flags 
with the stars and stripes, which had a very pleas- 
ing eftect, I assure you. The landlady's daughter 
sent a richly bound copy of Tupper's Poems. On 
a blank leaf was the following, written in a very 
delicate and careful hand : — 

Presented to . . . by . . . 
On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony. 
May sunshine ever beam o'er her I 

Even the poor relative thought she must do some- 
thing, and sent a copy of " The Whole Duty of 
Man," bound in very attractive variegated sheep- 
skin, the edges nicely marbled. From the divin- 



378 THE AUTOCRAT 

ity-student came the loveliest English edition of 
Keble^s " Christian Year." I opened it, when it 
came, to the Fourth Sunday in Lent, and read that 
angelic poem, sweeter than anything I can remem- 
ber since Xavier's " My God, I love thee.'^ 1 

am not a Churchman, — I don't believe in plant- 
ing oaks in flower-potls, — but such a poem as 
" The Rosebud " makes one's heart a proselyte 
to the culture it grows from. Talk about it as 
much as you like, — one's breeding shows itself 
nowhere more than in his religion. A man 
should be a gentleman in his hymns and prayers ; 
the fondness for " scenes," among vulgar saints, 
contrasts so meanly with that — • 

*' God only and good angels look 
Behind the blissful scene," — 

and that other, — 

" He could not trust his melting soul 
_ But in his Maker's sight," — 

that I hope some of them will see this, and read 
the poem, and profit by it. 

My laughing and winking young friend under- 
took to procure and arrange the flowers for the 
table, and did it with immense zeal. I never saw 
him look happier than when he came in, his hat 
saucily on one side, and a cheroot in his mouth, 
with a huge bunch of tea-roses, which he said 
were for " Madam." 



OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 379 

One of the last things that came was an old 
square box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed. 
It bore, in faded ink, the marks, " Calcutta, 
1805." On opening it, we found a white Cash- 
mere shawl, with a very brief note from the dear 
old gentleman opposite, saying that he had kept 
this some years, thinking he might want it, and 
many more, not knowing what to do with it, — 
that he had never seen it unfolded since he was a 
young supercargo, — and now, if she would spread 
it on her shoulders, it would make him feel young 
to look at it. 

Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of 
all work ! What must she do but buy a small 
copper breast-pin and put it under " School- 
ma'am's '^ plate that morning, at breakfast ? 
And Schoolma'am would wear it, — though I 
made her cover it, as well as I could, with a 
tea-rose. 

It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I 
could not leave them in utter silence. 

Good-by, — I said, — my dear friends, one and 
all of you ! I have been long with you, and I 
find it hard parting. I have to thank you for a 
thousand courtesies, and above all for the patience 
and indulgence with which you have listened to 
me when I have tried to instruct or amuse you. 
My friend the Professor (who, as well as my 
friend the Poet, is unavoidably absent on this 



38o THE AUTOCRAT, 

interesting occasion) has given me reason to sup- 
pose that he would occupy my empty chair about 
the first of January next. If he comes among 
you, be kind to him, as you have been to me. 
May the Lord bless you all ! — And we shook 
hands all round the table. 

Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things 
and the cloth were gone. I looked up and down 
the length of the bare boards over which I had so 
often uttered my sentiments and experiences — 
and — Yes, I am a man, like another. 

All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these 
old friends of mine, whom you know, and others 
a little more up in the world, perhaps, to whom I 
have not introduced you, I took the schoolmistress 
before the altar from the hands of the old gentle- 
man who used to sit opposite, and who would 
insist on giving her away. 

And now we two are walking the long path in 
peace together. The "schoolmistress " finds her 
skill in teaching called for again, without going 
abroad to seek little scholars. Those visions of 
mine have all come true. 

I hope you all love me none the less for any- 
thing I have told you. Farewell ! 



INDEX. 

<9o3> 



INDEX. 



A. 



Abuse, all good attempts get, 
95. 

^STirATiON, 321. 

Affinities and antipathies, 
263. 

Age, softening effects of, 96 j 
begins when fire goes down, 
182 ; Roman age of enlist- 
ment, 183 ; its changes a 
string of insults, 188. 

A GOOD TIME GOING, 272. 

Air-pump, animal under, 369. 
Album Verses, 18. 
Alps, effect of looking at, 325. 
American, the Englishman 

reinforced, (a noted person 

thinks,) 291. 
Analogies, power of seeing, 

97. 
Anatomist's Hymn, The, 211. 
Anglo-Saxons die out in 

America,(Dr.Knox thinks,) 

291. 
Anniversaries dreaded by 

the Professor, and why, 271. 
Arguments, what are those 

which spoil conversation, 

12. 
Aristocracy, the forming 

American, 317 ; pluck the 

back-bone of, 319. 
Artists apt to act mschani- 

cally on then- brains, 227. 



Assessors, Heaven's, effect of 
meeting one of them, ]09. 

Asylum, the, 301. 

Audience, average intellect 
of, 169 5 aspect of, 170 •, a 
compound vertebrate, 170. 

Audiences very nearly alike, 
169 j good feeling and in- 
telligence of, 171. 

Author does not hate any- 
body, 267. 

Authors, jockeying of, 43 j 
purr if skilfully handled, 
57 ; ashamed of being fun- 
ny, 57 ', hate those who 
call theni droll, 57 ; always 
praise after fifty, 96. 

Automatic principles appear 
more prevalent the more 
we study, 100 ; mental 
actions, 161. 

Averages, their awful uni- 
formity, 169. 



B. 

Babies, old, 186. 

Bacon, Lord, 331. 

Balzac, 181, 331. 

Beauties, vulgar, their virtu- 
ous indignation on being 
looked at, 236. 

Beliefs like ancient drink- 
ing-glasses, 17. 



384 



INDEX, 



Bell-glass, young woman 
under, 369. 

Benicia Boy, not challenged 
by the Professor, and why, 
209. 

Benjamin Franklin, the 
landlady'^ son, 14, 61, 67, 
94, 102, 162, 163, 300, 361. 

Berkshire, 287, 300, 324. 

Berne, leap from the plat- 
form at, 344. 

Blake, Mr., his Jesse Rural, 
107. 

Blondes, two kinds of, 222. 

"Blooded ".horses, 42. 

Boat, the Professor's own, 
description of, 203. 

Boating, the Professor de- 
scribes his, 199. 

Boats, the Professor's fleet 
of, 198. 

Books, hating, 73 5 society a 
strong solution of, 73 ; the 
mind sometimes feels above 
them, 158 *, a man's and a 
woman's reading, 335. 

Bores, all men are, except 
when we want them, 7. 

Boston, seven wise men of, 
their sayings, 149. 

Bowie-knife, the Roman gla- 
dius modified, 22. 

Brain, upper and lower sto- 
ries of, 217 ; attempts to 
reach mechanically, 227. 

Brains, seventy-year clocks, 
225 *, containing ovarian 
eggs, how to know them, 
238. 

Bridget becomes a caryatid, 
119 ; presents a breast-pin, 
379. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, admi- 
rable sentiment of, 110. 

Browning, Elizabeth, 371. 
ruce's 
of, &4. 



Bulbous-headed people, 7. 

Bunker-hill monument, 

rocking of, 347. 

Byron, his line about strik- 
ing the electric chain, 92. 



C. 

Cache, children make in- 
stinctively, 249. 

Calamities, grow old rapid- 
ly in proportion to their 
magnitude, 36 *, the rec- 
ollection of, returns after 
the first sleep as if new, 
37. 

Calculating machine, 9 ; 
power least human of qual- 
ities, ]0. 

Call him not old, 210. 

Campbell, misquotation of, 
83. 

Canary-bird, swimming 

movements of, 101. 

Cant terms, use of, 312. 

Carlyle, his article on Bos- 
well, 343. 

Carpenter's bench. Author 
works at, 217. 

Chambers Street, 332. 

Chamouni, 326. 

Characteristics, Carlyle's 
article, 64. 

Charles Street, 333. 

Chaucer compared to an 
Easter-Beurre, 97 

Chess-playing, conversation 
compared to, 75. 

Children, superstitious little 
wretches and spiritual 
cowards, 248. 

Chloroform, Professor, the, 
under, 358. 

Chryso-aristocracy, our, 
the weak point in, 318. 

Cicero de Senectute, Pro- 



INDEX. 



385 



fessor reads, 182 ; his trea- 
tise de Senectute^ 1S9. 

Cincinnati, how not to pro- 
nounce, 349. 

Circles, intellectual, 325. 

Cities, some of the smaller 
ones charming, 153 •, leak- 
ing of nature into, 334. 

Clerjy rarely hear sermons, 
33. 

Clergymen, their patients 
not always truthful, 102. 

Clock of the Andover Semi- 
nary, 343. 

Closet full of sweet smells, 91. 

Clcbs, advantages of, 75. 

Coat, constructed on a priori 
grounds, 79. 

Cobb, Sylvanus, Jr., 19 

Coffee, 301, 303. 

Cold-blooded creatures, 156. 

Coleridge, his remark on 
literary men's needing a 
profession, 217. 

Coliseum, visit to, 342. 

Comet, the late, 27. 

Commencement day, like the 
start for the Derby, 112. 

Common sense, as we under- 
stand it, 17. 

CoMMCNiCATiON'S received by 
the Author, 350. 

Company, the sad, 302 

Conceit bred by little local- 
ized powers and narrow 
streaks of knowledge, 10 ; 
natural to the mind as a 
centre to a circle, 11 ; uses 
of, 11 5 makes a p-ople 
cheerful, 12 

Constitution, American fe- 
male, 49 •, in choice of sum- 
mer resi<lence, 324. 

Contentment, 327. 

Controversy, hydrostatic 
paradox of, 136. 

Concndrl'MS indulged in by 

25 



the company, 307 ; rebuked 
by the Author, 308. 

Conversation, very serious 
matter, 6 ; with some per- 
sons weakening, 6 ; great 
faults of, 12 ; spoiled by- 
certain kinds of argument, 
12 5 a code of finalities ne- 
cessary to, 12 •, compared to 
Italian game of ?nora, 18 ; 
shcipjs our thoughts, 31 ; 
Blair-ing of reported, 46 ; 
one of the fine arts, 60 ; 
compared to chess-playing, 
75 •, depends on how much 
is taken for granted, 75 ; 
of Lecturers, 76. 

CooKESON, William, of All- 
Souls' College, 103. 

Copley, his portrait of the 
merchant-uncle, 24 5 of the 
great-grandmother, 24. 

" Correspondent, our For- 
eign," 140 

Counterparts of people in 
many different cities, 167. 

Cowper, 223 •, his lines on 
his mother's portrait, 344 5 
his lines on the " Royal 
George,-' 344. 

Creed, the Author's, 105. 

Crinoline, Otaheitan, 22. 

Crow and king-bird, 34. 

Curls, flat circular on tem- 
ples, 21. 

D. 

Dandies, uses of, 314 ; illus- 
trious ones, 315, 316 ; men 
are born, 317. 

Davidson, Lucretia and Mar- 
garet, 223. 

Deacon's Masterpiece, The, 
309. 

Death as a form of rhetoric, 
159 •, introduction to, 255. 



386 INDEX, 



Deerfield, elm in, 349. 

Devizes, woman struck dead 
at, 345. 

DiGHTON Rock, inscription 
on, 301. 

Dimensions, three of solids, 
handling ideas as if they 
had, 100. 

Divinity, doctors of, many- 
people qualified to be, 33. 

Divinity Student, the, 1, 49, 
97, 99, 102, 104, 120, 131, 
149, 150, 158, 163, 221, 227, 
234, 239, 248, 268, 280, 281, 
307, 315, 320, 377. 

Doctor, old, his catalogue of 
books for light reading, 190. 

Drinking-glasses, ancient, 
beliefs like, 17. 

Droll, authors dislike to be 
called, 57. 

Drunkenness often a punish- 
ment, 231. 

Dull persons great comforts 
at times, 7 ; happiness of 
finding we are, 72. 



E. 

Ears, voluntary movement of, 
10. 

Earth, not ripe yet, 27. 

Earthquake, to launch Levi- 
athan, 85. 

Eblis, hall of, 302. 

Editors, appeals to their be- 
nevolence, 357 j must get 
calluses, 357. 

Education, professional, most 
of our people have had, 33. 

Eggs, Ovarian, intellectual, 
237. 

Elm, American, 284; the great 
Johnston, 285 •, Hatfield, 
287 5 Sheffield, 287 5 West 
Springfield, 287 5 Pittsfield, 



288 5 Newburyport, 288 •, 
Cohasset, 288 5 EngUsh and 
American, comparison of, 
290. 

Elms, Springfield, 286 ; first 
class, 287 ; second class, 
288; Mr. Paddock's row 
of, 292 5 in Andover, 348, 
349 ; in Norwich, 349 5 in 
Deerfield, 349 5 in Lanca^r 
ter, two very large ones. 
See Lancaster. 

Emotions strike us obliquely, 
342. 

Epithets follow isothermal 
lines, 137. 

Erasmus, colloquies of, 103 ; 
naufragium or shipwreck 
of, 103. 

Erectile heads, men of gen- 
ius with, 7. 

Essays, diluted, 78. 

Essex Street, 332. 

Esther, Queen, and Ahasue- 
rus, 374. 

Eternity, remembering one's 
self in, 244. 

Everlasting, the herb, its 
suggestions, 89. 

Exercise, scientifically ex- 
amined, 202. 

Ex PEDE Herculem, 131. 

Experience, a solemn fowl ; 
her eggs, 331. 

Experts in crime and suffer- 
ing, 38. 



F. 



Faces, negative, 170. 

Facts, horror of generous 
minds for what are com- 
monly called, 5 ; the brute 
beasts of the intelligence, 
5 ; men of, 172. 

Family, man of, 24. 

Fancies, youthful, 326. 



INDEX. 



387 



Farewell, the Author's, 380. 

Fault found with everything 
worth saying, 133. 

Feeling that we have been 
in tlie same condition be- 
fore, 85 ; modes of explain- 
ing it, 86, 87. 

Feelings, every person's, 
have a front-door and a 
* side-door, 154. 

Fifty cents, a figure of rheto- 
ric, 320. 

Flash phraseology, 312, 313- 

Flavor, nothing knows its 
own, 64. 

Fleet of our companions, 111. 

Flowers, why poets talk so 
much of, 278. 

Franklin-place, front-yards 
in, 332. 

French exercise, Benjamin 
Franklin's, 67, 163. 

Friends, shown up by story- 
tellers, 71. 

Friendship does not author- 
ize one to say disagreeable 
things, 59. 

Front-door and side-door to 
our feelings, 154. 

Fruit, green, intellectual, 
these United States a great 
market for, 319 ; mourn- 
ing, 372. 

Fuel, carbon and bread gCnd 
cheese are equally, 188. 

FcNNY, authors ashamed of 
being, 57. 

"Fust-rate" and other vul- 
garism, 32. 

G. 

Geese for swans, 333. 
Genius, a weak flavor of, 3 ; 

the advent of, a surprise, 63. 
Gift-enterprises, Nature's, 

63, 64. 



Gilbert, the French poet, 
224. 

Gil Blas, the archbishop 
served him right, 59 5 mot- 
to from, 242. 

Gilpin, Daddy, 283. 

Girls' story in "Book of 
Martyrs," 370 ; two young, 
their fall from gallery, 343. 

Gizzard and Liver never con- 
founded, 375. 

GooD-BY, the Author's, 379. 

Grammar, higher law in, 45. 

Gravestones, transplanting 
of, 292. 

Green fruit, intellectual, 319. 

Ground-bait, literary, 43. 



Habit, what its essence is, 
188. 

Hand, the great wooden, 249. 

" Haow ? " whether final, 
131. 

Hat, the old gentleman oppo- 
site's white, 214 •, the au- 
thor's youthful Leghorn, 
215. 

Hats, aphorisms concerning, 
215. 

Hearts, inscriptions on, 301. 

Heresy, burning for, experts 
in, would be found in any 
large city, 38. 

Historian, the quotation 
from, on punning, 15. 

Honey, emptying the jug of, 
20. 

Horses, what they feed on, 
202. 

Hospitality depends on lati- 
tude, 365. 

Hot day, sounds of, 366. 

Hotel de VUnivers et des 
I Etats Unis, 151. 



388 



INDEX, 



Hous ATONIC, the Professor's 
dwelling by, 299. 

Houses, dying out of, 294 •, 
killed by commercial 
smashes, 294 ; shape them- 
selves upon our natures, 
296. 

House, the body we live in, 
294 5 Irishman's at Cam- 
bridgeport, 23. 

HouYNHNM Gazette, 277. 

Huckleberries, hail-storm 
of, 280. 

Hull, how Pope's line is read 
there, 154, 

Hum A, story of, 9. 

Humanities, cumulative, 26. 

Hyacinth, blue, 278, 279. 



I. 



Ice in wine-glass, tinkling 
like cow-bells, 91. 

Ideas, age of, in our memo- 
ries, 36 5 handling them as 
if they had the three dimen- 
sions of solids, 100. 

Imponderables move the 
world, 163. 

Impromptus, 19. 

Inherited traits show very 
early, 237. 

Insanity, the logic of an ac- 
curate mind overtasked, 
48 •, becomes a duty un- 
der certain circumstances, 
48. 

Instincts, crushing out of, 
369. 

Intemperance, the Author 
discourses of, 228. 

Intermittent, poetical, 303. 
^ventive Power 
cally used, 290. 

Iris, cut the yellow hair, 83. 



Irishman's house at Cam- 

bridgeport, 23. 
Island, the, 45. 



Jailers and undertakers 
magnetize people, 38. 

Jaundice, as a token of affec- 
tion, 159. 

John and Thomas, their dia- 
logue of six persons, 61. 

John, the young fellow called, 
63, 76,86,93,120,135,211, 
226, 234, 235, 253, 266, 281, 
307, 314, 320, 372, 378. 

Johnson, Dr., his remark on 
attacks, 136 ; lines to 
Thrale, 183. 

Judgment, standard of, how 
to establish, 17. 



K. 

Keats, 223. 

Keble, his poem, 378. 

"• Kerridge," and other char- 
acteristic expression^, 130. 

Kirke White, 224. 

Knowledge, little streaks of 
specialized, breed conceit, 
10. 

Knuckles, marks of on brok- 
en glass, 129. 



Lady, the real, not sensitive 
if looked at, 236. 

Lady-Boarder, the, with au- 
tograph-book, 7. 

Landlady, 61, 93, 128, 369, 
377. 

Landlady's daughter, 19, 21, 



66, 166, 167, 270, 281, 372, 
377. 

Latter-DAT Warnin^gs, 27. 

Laughter and tears, wind 
and water-power, 106. 

Lecturers, grooves in their 
minds, 76 •, talking in 
streaks out of their lec- 
tures, 77 5 get homesick, 
172 5 attacks upon, 367. 

Lectures, feelings connected 
with their delivery, 167 *, 
popular, what they should 
have, 168 ; old, 168 ; what 
they ought to be, 169. 

LEIBNIT7., remark of, 2. 

Les Societes Polyphysio- 
philosophiques, 163. 

Letter to an ambitious young 
man, 351. 

Letters with various re- 
quests, 82. 

Leviathax, launch of, 84. 

Life, compared to transcript 
of it, 70 5 compared to 
books, 161 •, divisible into 
fifteen periods, 186 5 early, 
revelations concerning, 246; 
its experiences, 336, .337. 

Lilac leaf-buds, 278, 279. 

Lion, the leaden one at Aln- 
wick, 344. 

LiSTON thought himself a 
tragic actor, 108. 

Literary pickpockets, 59. 

Living Temple, The, 212. 

LocHiEL rocked in cradle 
when old, 96. 

Log, using old schoolmates 
as, to mark our rate of 
sailing, 110. 

Logical minds, what they do, 
16. 

Long path, the, 368 ; walking 
together, 380. 

Landon, Letitia, 371. 

Love-capacity, 330. 



INDEX, 389 

Love, introduction to, 256 •, 
its relative solubility in the 
speech of men and women, 
331. 

Ludicrous, a divine idea, 
109. 

Luni VERS ART, retui'n of, 57. 

Lyric conception hits like a 
bullet, 117. 



M. 

Macaulay-flowers of Liter- 
ature, 16. 

"Magazine, Northern," got 
up by the " Come-Outers," 
144. 

Maine, willows in, 350. 

Man of family, 24. 

Map, photograph of, on the 
wall, 297. 

Mare Rubrum, 147. 

Marigold, its suggestions, 
89. 

Mather, Cotton, 78, 363. 

Meerschaums and poems 
must be kept and used, 
121, 123. 

Men, self-made, 23 5 all, love 
all women, 268. 

Mesalliance^ dreadful con- 
sequences of, 263. 

Middle-aged female, takes 
offence, 34. 

Millionism, green stage of, 
373. 

Milton compared to a Saint- 
Germain pear, etc., 97. 

Mind, automatic actions of, 
162. 

Minds, classification of, 1 ; 
jerky ones fatiguing, 6; log- 
ical, what they do, 16 •, 
calm and clear best basis 
for love and friendship, 157; 
saturation-point of, 160. 



390 



INDEX. 



Minister, my old, his remarks 
on want of attention, 35. 

Misery, a great one puts a 
new stamp on us, 38. 

Misfortune, professional 
dealers in, 38. 

Misprints, 56. 

Molasses, Melasses, or Mo- 
lossa's, 78. 

Mora, Italian game of con- 
versation compared to, 18. 

Moralist, the great, quota- 
tion from on punning, 15. 

Mountains and sea, 322. 

Mourning fruit, 372. 

Mug, the bitten, 244. 

Muliebrity and femineity in 
voice, 263. 

MusA, 304. 

Muscular powers, when they 
decline, 189. 

Muse, the, 304. 

Musicians, odd movements of, 
100. 

Music, its effects different 
from thought, 159. 

Mutual Admiration, Society 
of, 2. 

My Lady's Cheek, (verse,) 
186. 

Myrtle Street, discovered 
by the Professor, 200 •, de- 
scription of, 201 5 garden 
in, 332. 



N. 



Nahant, 324. 

Nature, Amen of, 279 •, leak- 
ing of, into cities, 334. 

Nautilus, The Chambered, 
115. 

Nerve-playing, masters of, 
155. 

Nerve-tapping, 6. 

Nerve, olfactory, connection 
of, with brain, 90. 



Newton his speech about the 

child and the pebbles, 98. 
Norwich, elms in, 349 5 how 

not to pronounce, 349. 
Novel, one, everybody has 

stuff for, 69 ; why I do not 

write, 69. 

O. 

Oak, its one mark of suprem- 
acy, 283. 

Ocean, the, two men walking 
by, 98. 

Old Age, starting point of, 
183 5 allegory of, 183 5 ap- 
proach of, 185 5 habits the 
great mark of, 187 ; how 
nature cheats us into, 187 ; 
in the Professor's contem- 
poraries, 194 ; remedies for, 
197 5 excellent remedy for, 
210. 

Old Gentleman opposite, 
the, 3, 61, 72, 102, 118, 211, 
214, 216, 239, 254, 256, 379, 
380. 

Old Man, a person startled 
when he first hears himself 
called so, 187. 

Old Men, always poets if they 
ever have been, 119. 

Omens, of childhood, 250- 

One-hoss Shay, The Won- 
derful, 309. 

"Our Sumatra Correspond- 
ence," 141. 



Pail, the white pine, of water, 
244. 

Parallelism, without iden- 
tity, in Oriental and Occi- 
dental nature, 290. 

Parentheses, dismount the 
reader, 214. 



INDEX. 



391 



Parsox Turell's Legacy, 
361. 

Path, the long, 338. 

Pears, meu are like, in com- 
ing to maturity, 97. 

Phosphorus, its suggestions, 
88. 

Photographs of the Past, 296. 

Phrases, complimeutary, ap- 
plied to authors, what de- 
termines them, 137. 
•PiE, the young fellow treats 
disrespectfully, 93 5 the 
Author takes too large a 
piece of, 94. 

Piecrust, poems, etc., writ- 
ten under influence of, 91. 

Pillar, the Hangman's, 315. 

PiNKXEY, William, 7. 

Pirates, Danish, their skins 
on church doors, 128 

Plagiarism, Author's virtu- 
ous disgust for, 176. 

Pocket-book fever, 252. 

Poem — with the slight al- 
terations^ 55. 

Poems, alterations of, 54 , 
have a body and a soul, 
117 ; green state of, 120 5 
porous like meerschaums, 
123 ; post-prandial, the 
Professor's idea of, 271 

Poet, mv friend, the, 117, 
153, 210. 216 et seq., 222, 
271, 272, 271. 

Poets love verses while warm 
from their minds, 120 •, two 
kinds of, 222 •, apt to act 
mechanically on their 
brains, 227 

Poets and artists, why like 
to be prone to abuse of 
stimulants, 232. 

Poetaster who has tasted 
type, 356. 

Poetical impulse externaL 
118. 



' Poetry uses white light for 
I its main object, 58. 

Polish lance, 22. 
I Poor relation in black bom- 
bazine, 34, 102, 120, 253, 
320, 377. 

Poplar, murder of one, 284. 

Port-chuck, his vivacious 
sally, 215. 

Portsmouth, how not to pro- 
nounce, 349. 

Powers, little localized, breed 
conceit, 10. 

Preacher, dull, might lapse 
into quasi heathenism, 33 

"Prelude," the Professor's, 
359. 

Prentiss, Dame, 244. 

Pride in a woman, 330 

Prince Rupert's drops of lit- 
erature, 44 

Principle, against obvious 
facts, 66. 

Private Journal, extract from 
my, 301. 

Private theatricals, 49. 

Probabilities provided with 
huff'ers^ 65. 

Profession, literary men 
should have a, 217. 

Professor, my friend the, 28, 
84, 95, 106, 129, 136, 144, 
179 et* seq., 211, 216 et 
seq., 235, 237, 238, 274, 294 
et seq.^ 309, 358 et seq. 

Prologue, 51. 

Public Garden, 333. 

Pugilists, when " stale," 189. 

Punning, quotations respect- 
ing, 15. 

Puns, law respecting, 13 j 
what they consist in, 58 ; 
surreptitiously circulated 
among the company, 307. 

Pupil of the eye, simile con- 
cerning, the Author dis- 
gorges, 174. 



392 



INDEX, 



Q. 



Quantity, false, Sidney 
Smith's remark on, 131. 



Race of life, the, report of 
running in, 113. 

Races, our sympathies go 
naturally with higher, 77. 

Racing, not republican, 39. 

Raphael and Michael Angelo, 
249. 

Raspail's proof-sheets, 28, 

Rat des Salons a Lecture^ 
67. 

Reading for the sake of talk 
ing, 161 ; a man's and a 
woman's, 335. 

Recollections, trivial, es- 
sential to our identity, 243. 

Relatives, opinions of as to 
a man's powers, 63. 

Repeating one's self, 8. 

Reputation, living on contin- 
gent, 72. 

Reputations, conventional, 
43. 

."Retiring" at night, eti- 
quette of, 253. 

Rhode-Island, near what 
place, 284. 

Rhymes, old, we get tired of, 
20 5 bad to chew upon, 354. 

Ridiculous, love of, danger- 
ous to literary men, 107. 

Roses, damask, 277, 280. 

Rowing, nearest approach to 
flying, 204 •, its excellences, 
205 5 its joys, 205. 

"Royal George," the. Cow 
per's poem on, 344. 

Rum, the term applied by 
low people to noble fluids, 
230. 



S. 



Saas-plates, 373. 

Saddle-leather compared to 
sole-leather, 201. 

" Sahtisfahction," a tepid 
expression, 126. 

Saint Genevieve, visit to 
tomb of, 343. 

"Saints and their bodies," 
an admirable Essay, 198. 

Santorini's laughing-muscle, 
235. 

Saving one's thoughts, 31. 

Schoolmistress, the, 37, 49, 
72, 85, 102, 128, 140, 149, 
150, 163, 221, 222, 246, 248, 
253, 256 et seq., 277, 291, 
292, 300 et seq , 325, 375 
et seq., 380. 

"Science," the Professor's 
inward smile at her airs, 
217- 

Scientific certainty has no 
spring in it, 65. 

Scientific knowledge par- 
takes of insolence, 65. 

Scraping the floor, effect of, 
58. 

Sea and Mountains, 322. 

Seed capsule (of poems,) 
243. 

Self-determining power, 
limitation of, 105. 

Self-esteem, with good 
ground is imposing, 11. 

Self-made men, 23. 

Sermon, proposed, of the 
Author, 101. 

Sermons, feeble, hard to lis- 
ten to, but may act induc- 
tively, 33 

Sentiments, all splashed and 
streaked with, 277. 

Seven Wise Men of Boston, 
their sayings, 149. 

Shakespeare, old copy, with 



INDEX, 



393 



flakes of pie-crust between 
its leaves, 92. 

Shawl, the -iDdian blanket, 
22. 

Shortening weapons and 
lengthening boundaries, 22. 

Ship, the, and martin-house, 
252. 

Ships, afraid of, 249. 

Shop-blinds, iron, produce a 
shiver, 326, 

Sierra Leone, native of, en- 
joying himself, 367. 

Sight, pretended failure of, in 
old persons, 209. 

Slmilitcde and analogies, 
ocean of, 99. 

Sin, its tools and their han- 
dle, 149 5 introduction to, 
255. 

Smell, as connected with the 
memory, etc., 88. 

Smile, the terrible, 234. 

Smith, Sidney, abused by 
London Quarterly Review, 
103. 

Sneaking fellows to be re- 
garded tenderly, 268. 

tSociETiES of mutual admira- 
tion, 2 

Soul, its concentric envelopes, 
295. 

Sounds, suggestive ones, 258, 
259. 

Sparring, the Professor sees 
a little, and describes it, 
207. 

Spoken language plastic, 31. 

Sporting men, virtues of, 
42. 

Spring has come, 239. 

Sqorming when old false- 
hoods are turned over, 135. 

Stage-Ruffian, the, 61. 

"Stars, the, and the Earth," 
a little book, referred to, 
324. 



State House, Boston, the 

hub of the solar system, 

150. 
" Statoo of deceased infant," 

130. 
Stillicidium, sentimental, 94. 
Stone, flat, turning over of, 

133. 
Stranger, who came with 

young fellow called John, 

150, 372. 
" Strap ! " my man John's 

story, 127. 
Strasburg Cathedral, rocking 

of its spire. 346. 
Striking in of thoughts and 

feelings, 161. 
Stuart, his two p/ortraits, 

24 
Summer, residence, choice of, 

324 
Sun and Shadow, 47. 
Sunday mornings, how the 

Author shows his respect 

for, 211. 
Swans, taking his ducks for, 

333. 
Swift, property restored to, 

176. 
Swords, Roman and Ameri- 
can, 22. 
SyLVA NOVANfiLICA, 288. 

Syntax, Dr., 283. 



Talent, a little makes people 
jealous, 3. 

Talkers, real, 172. 

Talking like playing at a 
mark with an engine, 32 j 
one of the fine arts, 60. 

Teapot, literary, 73. 

The last Blossom, 195 

The old Man dreams, 80. 

The two Armies, 275. 



394 



INDEX. 



The Voiceless, 371. 

Theological students, we all 
are, 33. 

Thought revolves in cycles, 
85 5 if uttered, is a kind of 
excretion, 238. 

Thoughts may be original, 
though often before uttered, 
8 5 saving, 31 •, shaped in 
conversation, 31 5 tell worst 
to minister and best to 
young people, 35 5 my best 
seem always old, 36 ; real, 
knock out somebody's wind, 
136. 

Thought-Sprinklers, 31. 

Time and space, 325 

Tobacco-stain may strike 
into character, 1^2. 

Tobacco-stopper, lovely one, 
121. 

Towns, small, not more mod- 
est than cities, 151 

Toy, author carves a wonder- 
ful at Marseilles, 218. 

Toys moved by sand, caution 
from one, 94 

Travel, maxims relating to, 
341 5 recollections of, 341. 

Tree, growth of, as shown by 
rings of wood, 347 5 slice of 
a hemlock, 347 •, its growth 
compared to human lives, 
348. 

Trees, great, 281 *, mother- 
idea in each kind of, 283 ; 
afraid of measuring-tape, 
285 , Mr. Emerson's report 
on, 286 5 of America, our 
friend's interesting work 
on, 289. 

Tree-wives, 281. 

Triads, writing in, 100. 

Trois Freres, dinners at the, 
91. 

Trotting, democratic and fa- 
vorable to many virtues, 



42 ; matches not races, 

42. 
Truth, primary relations 

with, 16. 
Truths and lies compared to 

cubes and spheres, 138. 
Tupper, 19, 377. 
Tupperian wisdom, 331. 
Tutor, my late Latin, his 



U. 

Unloved, the, 370. 

V. 

Veneering in conversation, 
173. 

Verse, proper medium for 
revealing our secrets, 71. 

Verses, album, 18 ; absti- 
nence from writing, the 
mark of a poet, 245. 

Verse-writers, their peculi- 
arities, 354. 

Violins, soaked in music, 
123 ; take a century to dry, 
124. 

Virtues, negative, 320. 

Visitors, getting rid of, when 
their visit is over, 20. 

Voice, the Teutonic maiden's, 
262 ; the German woman's, 
263; the little child's in 
the hospital, 264. 

Voices, certain female, 260, 
261 5 fearfully sweet ones, 
261 ; hard and sharp, 264 ; 
people do not know their 
own, 265 j sweet must be- 
long to good spirits, 265. 

Voleur^ brand of, on galley 
rogues, 126. 

Volume, man of one, 173. 



INDEX. 



395 



w. 



Walking arm against arm, 
21 *, laws of, 84 ; sanctioned, 
200 ; riding and rowing 
compared, 203. 

Wasp, sloop of war, 251. 

"Watch-paper, the old gen- 
tleman's, 257. 

"Water, the white-pine pail 
of, 244. 

Wedding, the, 380. 

Weddin'g-presents, the, 377. 

Wellington, gentle in his 
old age, 96. 

What we all think, 177. 

Will, compared to a drop of 
water in a crystal, 101. 

Willows in Maine, 350. 

Wine of ancients, 78. 

Wit takes imperfect views 
of things, 58. 

Woman, an excellent instru- 
ment for a nerve-player, 
166 ] to love a, must see 
her through a pin-hole, 
271 ; must be true as death, 
330 \ marks of low and bad 
blood in, 330 ; love-ca- 
pacity in, 330 ; pride in, 
330 -, why she should not 
say too much, 331. 

Women, young, advice to, 
56 ', inspire poets, 221 5 
their praise the poet's re- 



ward, 221 •, first to detect 
a poet, 222 j all men love 
all, 268 5 all, love all men, 
269 ; pictures of, 270 -, who 
have weighed all that life 
can offer, 337. 

Woodbridge, Benjamin, his 
grave, 292, 294. 

World, old and new, com- 
parison of their types of 
organization, 289 

Writing with feet in hot 
water, 8 5 like shooting with 
a rifle, 32. 



Y. 

Yes ? in conversation, 21. 

Young Fellow called John, 
63, 76, 86, 93, 120, 135, 211, 
226, 234, 235, 253, 266, 281, 
307, 314, 320, 372, 378. 

Young Lady come to be fin- 
ished off, 11. 

Youth, flakes off like button- 
wood bark, 185 ; American, 
not perfect type of physical 
humanity, 206 5 and age, 
what Author means by, 
242 

Z. 

ZiMMERMANN, 7. 



Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Eigelow, & Co. 



